The Bee Kind Garden: a qualitative description of work with maltreated children

Although overwhelming numbers of children experience maltreatment in the U.S.A., less than half receive mental health services. Furthermore, those seeking treatment frequently find a lack of available and/or appropriate services, thus many communities look for alternative ways to provide services to maltreated children. In this article we describe the Bee Kind Garden, an innovative project for maltreated children. Because the combination of strategies employed in the Garden was not found in any other comparable, published program, our goal is to describe the program from treatment providers' perspectives and to provide a theoretical basis for the program's conceptualization. We conducted semistructured interviews with providers from a wide variety of professional backgrounds and roles (e.g. child therapists, animal-assisted therapists, environmental educators). Through qualitative analyses, we identified five primary themes that encompassed providers' descriptions: Metaphorical environment, garden environment, one-on-one relationship, child-centered focus, and challenging representational models. Results and conclusions describing this innovative program are presented in the context of current child maltreatment literature. Discussion of collaboration between community-based organizations and academic researchers is suggested.