A charity that connects assistance dogs with children is so strapped for funding that it hasn’t been able to add anyone to its waitlist for two years.
Assistance Dogs New Zealand Trust is the country’s only internationally accredited organisation that works with kids.
It was founded in 2008 by Julie and Rick Hancox after she found people with disabilities such as autism and Downs Syndrome didn’t have access to service dogs.
Its waitlist currently has 34 families waiting to be connected with a dog, and since it closed in 2022, 600 more have shown interest in joining.
Speaking to Breakfast this morning, spokesperson Kendra van der Linden said the organisation needed to raise $75,000 by the end of September to be able to reopen the waitlist.
She said the organisation is partnered with sponsors, “but we don’t actually receive any government funding at all, and so we rely entirely on the generosity of our community to continue our day-to-day operations”.
“So, we need people to come on board and support so that we can meet the demand for our services.”
The organisation planned to hold a street appeal tomorrow, hoping to raise enough money to continue its work. She also urged people to donate on its website.
Tim Opie, whose daughter was paired with Rocco five years ago, told Breakfast the assistance dog had made a “huge difference” in his family’s lives.
He said as a parent, it had been “incredible” to see how his daughter’s independence had developed since getting Rocco.
“When we first got him five years ago, he was kind of set up and trained for about four core tasks.”
These included early detection of seizures, support with sensory processing challenges, personal safety, and broader social connection.
Over time, “his role has actually changed a bit”.
“In the early years, a lot of it, for instance, from a safety perspective, she was fully tethered to Rocco… That was literally there to stop her doing crazy stuff like running across roads and so forth.
“Now she has a separate kind of lead, which is more about independence as she feels like she’s kind of walking Rocco and so forth, so huge difference.”
Opie said from his daughter’s perspective: “I think the biggest sell job I could do is Rocco is sort of like three roles in one.
“He plays the role of best friend. He’s like a personal assistant to her because of all those basic daily tasks that we take for granted. He’s an incredible help for those tasks. She gets a personal assistant, and she also gets a development coach.”
He said: “We probably have aspirations around two things, one of which is to raise our kids to live independent lives.
“But the second is also for our kids to realise their dependence on others in the way they live their lives.
“So, assistance dogs and Rocco, as far as our case is concerned, fulfil both those tasks.”