Global Perspectives: Care Farming
The recording of this event is now available to view, click here to visit our Youtube Channel.
Joy and Judy connected in March 2020 over their shared interest in care farming and since then have stayed in touch to share thoughts, ideas and research. They will discuss their respective Churchill Fellowship projects and share current projects, key findings and next steps to continue their work in the UK and Australia.
About the Fellows
Ms Judy Brewer AO – 2019 Australian Churchill Fellow
Judy is a nationally recognised speaker and writer on issues relating to regional Australia, particularly with regard to autism and neurodiverse families. She lives on and manages a beef property at Mudgegonga in north east Victoria, and for many years has combined farming with an off farm career in education and various advocacy roles.
In 2019 she was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to further develop a business template for care farming in Australia by investigating various types of social farming operations in the UK, Ireland and the Asia Pacific region.
With Covid preventing physical travel over this period, Judy has been networking with others in Australia and internationally to commence her project. It was through these meetings that she virtually met Joy and they have shared many contacts, information and ideas over this time. Her own care farm plans have progressed as well with individual and small group visits to her farm occurring regularly now as she scales up the project to an environmentally and economically sustainable business.
Judy has had many leadership roles over the years, in agriculture, politics and disability. More recently she has chaired the national Autism Co-operative Research Council, the national Palliative Care Outcomes Committee, convened the Autism Future Leaders program and been appointed the Honorary Chancellor of Charles Sturt University.
In 2016, Judy was named as an Officer of the Order of Australia, an AO, for her service to people with a disability, refugees living in rural areas, women and education.
Ms Joy O’Neill – UK Churchill Fellow
Joy has over twenty years’ experience of teaching across birth to 25 age range in schools and universities and as a Leader and Adviser in Local Authorities and the charity sector.
In 2018, while supporting a young person at risk of exclusion from school, she visited a care farm. Since then, she has been fascinated by the concept of care farming and how this could support education, health and wellbeing for vulnerable individuals. Between 2019 and 2021 Joy was a Director of a Buckinghamshire-based care farm.
While investigating more about the topic, she arranged visits to almost 50 care farms, city farms and social or therapeutic gardens across the South East of England to learn about the benefits they provided for clients. While there many shared their private concerns and worries, which usually centred around funding and attracting enough clients. Joy began to wonder if there were any real benefits for anyone other than the clients themselves, in a care farm set up and decided to apply for a Churchill Fellowship to research care farming with a focus on the benefits to the farmer, the local community and the rural economy.
After a delay of fourteen months due to the global pandemic, she accepted the opportunity to complete the research through a ‘Digital Fellowship’ route. Joy has the honour of being the first UK Churchill Fellow to complete a Digital Fellowship and was able to increase the number of countries included in the research, adding Australia, Austria, Israel and the United States to the original list of Ireland and Italy.
You can contact these Fellows via their Fellowship pages: