A bold plan to resurrect Australia’s first horse-riding school for people with disabilities has been hatched after a charity controversially closed the centre earlier this year – a move one community leader described as like “having the heart ripped out”.
In a shock move, Help Enterprises shut the McIntyre Centre at Pinjarra Hills in Brisbane’s west in July, angering many within the local community and leaving children who used the school, and their families, bereft.
Help has since sold the centre’s much-loved horses, which have been likened to guide dogs in terms of the level of training they need to work with people living with disabilities.
Help was gifted the horse-riding school in 2017 but has repeatedly refused to share the terms of the Deed of Gift.
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The charity said keeping the centre open had cost a minimum of $70,000 a month, including vet bills, horse feed, farriers, insurance, ground maintenance, staff costs and utilities.
But it said with National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) funding of $86 per session, there was a big gap between that and what it cost to operate the service.
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"When HELP took on the McIntyre Centre in 2017, there were about 7,500 rides undertaken in a year.
“With funding changes including those to the school riding program, this reduced to around 2,800 per year, as schools could not self-fund their riding programs.”
Entitled Locals; “we can’t afford to run this white elephant. Let’s gift it to a charity and make it their problem”. Charity; “we can’t afford to run it either, we will have to liquidate it and put the funds into something more beneficial to the whole community” Entitled Locals; “wait, what!?”
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A bold plan to resurrect Australia’s first horse-riding school for people with disabilities has been hatched after a charity controversially closed the centre earlier this year – a move one community leader described as like “having the heart ripped out”.
In a shock move, Help Enterprises shut the McIntyre Centre at Pinjarra Hills in Brisbane’s west in July, angering many within the local community and leaving children who used the school, and their families, bereft.
Help has since sold the centre’s much-loved horses, which have been likened to guide dogs in terms of the level of training they need to work with people living with disabilities.
A steering committee to save the centre as a riding school was formed after a recent public meeting and is preparing a proposal to deliver to Help Enterprises – a move made more challenging after the sale of the horses.
Help said the “current NDIS funding model and aggressive inflationary costs” resulted in the “very hard decision” to stop operations at the McIntyre Centre.
It sold some of the land acquired as part of merger and used the proceeds to assist with the purchase of a new farm stay and respite centre, Help’s 2019 financial report says.
The original article contains 1,139 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 83%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
$70,000 a month is quite the stinger in a gift!
