The Green Care Quality Mark

Assuring Quality via the Social Farms & Gardens' Green Care Quality Mark (formerly the Care Farming Code of Practice)

The Green Care Quality Mark is suitable for a range of farm and garden sites delivering commissioned services for those with a defined need - including green care services such as care farming, Social &Therapeutic Horticulture (STH) and Animal Assisted Therapies (AAT) and is essentially a minimum standard - a clear set of guidelines - intended to meet the requirements of commissioners, referral agencies and service users. The Quality Mark represents the re-development of the Care farming Code of Practice and like the Code, it is managed by Social Farms & Gardens and is a site-specific, self-assessment  application, regularly updated to reflect any changes in commissioning, legislation and good practice. We encourage all those providing care farming and green care services to adopt the Quality Mark. The Quality Mark is organised into four sections: 

• About our organisation
• We run a responsible operation 
• We care about the people we work with 
• Our organisation is a safe place to be 

An organisation's Quality Mark application is reviewed by a panel of peer reviewers and when passed, the organisation is awarded Quality Mark status. Like its predecessor the care farming Code, the Quality Mark operates on a rolling cycle, with an annual 'Compliance' process to maintain Quality Mark status.

All those care farms and green care sites that are currently in the Care farming Code process will be automatically transferred over to the Green Care Quality Mark process at the time of their annual compliance and will be asked to submit the Quality Mark application at that time. 

If you would like to find out more then please read on!

How to apply

For details of how to apply for the Greeen Care Quality Mark and what to do next - click here 

Find a Quality Mark / Code compliant  care farm or green care site

If you would like to find an organisation near you that has the Quality Mark /Code, or is working towards it then please follow the link to our searchable map here

If you still have further queries then please feel free to get in touch by emailing qualitymark@farmgarden.org.uk

Resources

We have a number of resources about the care farming Code of Practice, many of which are still very relevant for the Green Care Quality Mark, you can view these resources here

"Care farming colleagues who have applied the Code of Practice to their work give us added confidence that they are professional and represent care farming as a positive, quality service"

Magdalen Environmental Trust, Somerset 

"Completing the Code of Practice highlighted a number of areas that we needed to tighten up on, but also identified the areas of care farming that we were doing really well! A worthwhile process and the badge has been used numerous times in funding bids!"

Densholme Care Farm, N. Yorks.