R.O.C.K., Ride On Center for Kids

As a family that has a child that would greatly benefit from hippotherapy, we were encouraged to look into the R.O.C.K. center for our daughter. My daughter has CHARGE syndrome and is deaf blind and has multiple disabilities. She is essentially missing her vestibular system and has to learn to balance with her eyes, and she has very limited vision to begin with. We were told especially for children with specific disability would greatly benefit from this form of therapy.
We reached out to the ROCK originally in July of 2014 & visited in early July over a year ago to determine when we could sign my daughter up. They confirmed that our daughter would greatly benefit from this therapy but after some further conversation and consideration regarding her age, they ultimately told us we would need to wait until she was 2 to begin therapy. At the time they also told us specifically that we should reach out and start the paperwork a couple months before her 2^nd birthday. During this 6 month period we were getting calls from the school weekly because my daughter is having serious falls due to her lack of balance and low vision. So, we weren’t entirely happy with this answer because we know many other families with the same syndrome who had started this therapy at 18 months and seen therapies, but my daughter’s 2^nd birthday is in April and we reached out again in February to start the process of enrolling her, expecting that she would be able to start in April when she turned 2. Instead at that time we were told to email Kristin who oversees the waiting list and Kristin didn’t reply to us for over 2 weeks and then tells me that we needed to get on a waiting list and that we better hurry because they had had tons of applications for the fall come through that week (after we had reached out over 2 weeks before with no response) and that they were starting to have a waiting list for the fall enrollment and letting us know that we would have to wait 6 more months before she could enroll and that people who had just applied that week were somehow already ahead of us on the waiting list and they may not have openings for us.
At this point we were very frustrated with the R.O.C.K center and talked to our therapists who had recommended them to us about other centers. Our therapists also couldn’t believe this response, but said stand by and not explore other options that they would talk to contacts that they knew at the center and see what they could do. So, ultimately some time passed and we did not hear anything back from the R.O.C.K, so we decided to fill out the enrollment forms. This is an extensive enrollment form, we had to get my daughter’s medical team to fill out portions, etc. We submitted it and the center thanked us, but gave us no real indication of a waiting list, etc. Then a couple months goes by and they get back to us saying they need us to fill out another form regarding schedules. We sent that to them, then heard absolutely nothing back. Every time we have ever dealt with them we have probably had to email 2 times over an extended time to even get a response. Now we are finally told that they have no spots and MAY have a spot in JANUARY for my daughter! I can’t believe we wasted over a year working with this center, there are other nearby centers that provide equine therapy in the local area that I reached out to today who after telling them our story and my daughter’s needs said they completely agreed my daughter should not wait until January to these services and would work our family into their schedule. You would think that this is the type of response I would be getting from a facility I had visited over a year ago and been requesting therapy from for over a year, but instead they do not appear concerned with the outcomes of individual therapy or addressing my concerns.
I don’t understand first of all how a place that is registered as a 501. C3 charity can charge families for therapy. If enrolled, this therapy would cost our family about $ 100 a session, which is not covered by insurance. We are a middle class family and have over $ 60,000 in medical care related expenses related to my 2 year old daughter in just this year and are going into debt just to get my daughter the therapies she needs & were committed to paying whatever it took weekly if it could help my daughter. It seems like the majority of people with the ROCK appear to volunteer, so much is donated, etc but I am not sure where this funding goes since it obviously isn’t to making it a priority to serve families with needs for therapy in the community.
I am concerned because there are no contacts for their board listed to address my concerns.
I plan on writing all of the sponsors who have contributed to this massive center & asking them to support other places that are putting families & outcomes first and are actually invested in helping families in the special needs community.