Parkwood Farms Therapy Center provides therapeutic riding and Equine Assisted Activities for children who have an autism spectrum disorder. HSBC Bank is about to evict the owners from the property. The owners of the therapy center are seeking a temporary stay on the foreclosure.
Parkwood Farms Therapy Center, Inc., is located in Snellville, Georgia. They offer therapeutic programs for children who have special needs. Those needs can include autism, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, emotional or behavioral problems, and learning disabilities. The Center can start helping children who are as young as the age of 2. There isn’t an upward age limit.
The signature program at Parkwood Farms is therapeutic riding and Equine Assisted Activities. According to their website, they also offer “chiropractic services, Bio-Medical/Defeat Autsim Now! Intervention, Bio-Clense, Far Infared Sauna, mild Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (mHBOT), and Nutritional counseling”. Parkwood farms is also the training facility for the Special Olympics Equestrian team.
All of this could be gone soon, due to problems with their mortgage Dr. Marilyn Peterson has started a petition at Change.org that has a lot of details about the situation.
She sold her home eleven years ago in order to build Parkwood Farms Therapy Center. She wanted to help children who had autism through non-traditional therapy like horse riding. Her son, Julian, has autism. The petition also says:
A few years ago, we discovered that the loan we took out on the farm was in fact a predatory loan. Our original loan was sold to another company and our rates more than doubled. We have been trying to work with the banks to modify the loan but instead, we were served with an eviction notice last week. Now, we are seeking a temporary stay on the foreclosure.
If the petition gains enough signatures, it will be presented to several people who work in influential positions at HSBC Bank. If you feel so inclined, you can sign the petition at Change.org. There is another way to help, if you would like to. There is a “Save the Farm” fundraiser going on at the Parkwood Farms website. You can send money by texting the word HORSES to 28594, or you can send a check to the address on the website.
Obviously, the children who were being helped by the therapy they received at Parkwood Farms are not going to be able to continue with it if the farm is closed due to eviction. At the very least, no matter the outcome, the children are going to experience an interruption in their therapy. That is never ideal.
Image by Marilyn Peddle on Flickr