Mary Bridge Children's Therapy Center - Renton

"My son was scheduled over a year ago and still has not been seen. They keep cancelling and rescheduling his appointment. I am beyond frustrated. This is legally considered abandonment. They were supposed to call me back with a new date and time and still have not heard from them."

"I am horrified that an establishment so poorly run is in the business of helping children. The first glaring red flag is the women at the front desk. The initial phone call she tells me they have a 4 month wait list, then tells me I must call my insurance to approve services before she will even get me on the books. After I was able to schedule the appointment, I was called, not once but FOUR times, to reschedule my appointment. The receptionist who was in communication with me should be fired. Not once did she apologize or recognize the huge inconvenience they were causing. I was having to pay for child care for another child when she was canceling, in once case, the day before the appointment. She offered no explanation other that repeating multiple times the very unhelpful- “I have a note saying to reschedule you.” The very first thing I did when I called in looking for the appointment was say something along the lines of- “I’m looking to increase our therapy frequency, and need to know that if you are able to see my child more often than what we are doing now.” I was told it depends on what the therapist recommends and was warned that they are very busy and that I would be going on the wait list and would need to wait for spots to open up. After waiting months for the appointment, being canceled on 4 times, we were able to do the evaluation. They recommended, in writing that we be seen TWICE a week. In that session she told me that only had availability for once a week. That was fine, I knew we may have to wait to get the services we needed. They also told me though that we were forbidden to see our current therapist. At that point they had said it was due to “hoarding services” later it was an insurance issue. We spoke to insurance, the only issue was that we could not do two speech therapy appointments on the same day- that made sense we were more than happy to oblige. Two sessions in I am told that we will never be allowed more than one session. I’m immediately frustrated as the frequency of visits was the whole reason I sought out an additional therapist. I was sure there must be some sort of confusion since the evaluator had put in writing “frequency should be increased to 2 per week when scheduling allows.” I wait in line at the front desk to speak with someone. I give them my name and the receptionist immediately walks away from me without explanation. The other receptionist leans over and says she needs a minute to “cool down” when she comes back she immediate starts talking over me. “your appointment is at 9:30.” Yes, it was 10:20, I had just come from it. “we called you yesterday.” Yes, we had called back multiple times trying to speak with the director and played phone tag all day. She continues to talk over me not allowing me to ask my question. I feel like I’m being treated as a drug addict, trying to get my next fix of speech therapy?! When I am finally able to get in a word edgewise. I say that we were assured we would be able to have a higher frequency of appointments. Both on the initial call as well as when we were evaluated. I tell her in the evaluation she had recommended at least 2 appointments weekly. She says we would only ever be allowed one. I tell her the very first phone call I had told them we were looking for 4-5 appointments, as the basic recommendation for my son’s condition. She says to me ----- “If your son had a stroke, we would not see him that often!” ---- I was floored by her wildly insensitive and ignorant comment. My son’s condition actually the same condition which can occur from a stroke. I’ll sum this up by saying we will not be back. We are now looking at driving an hour farther and paying out of pocket…. And it will be well worth it to not have to go back there again. I left in tears, we were so hopeful at first but were INCREDIBLY disappointed."

"My baby had trouble feeding early on due to a birth injury and extended NICU stay. We were referred to a nutritionist at Children's Therapy after discharge just to make sure he was on track. He had been fed via feeding tube for his first 4 weeks of life, so his growth percentiles started pretty high and began dropping when he was feeding on his own. I suggested to his nutritionist that it might be him "catching down" to his natural growth rate, but they insisted that he was malnourished. After his growth rate was steady for a few months at the lower percentile, I decided to stop taking him there to see the nutritionist, who said that he still wasn't growing fast enough. Fast forward to him being a healthy, active, 21-month old great eater at 10th percentile for weight, meeting every milestone. Nutritionists are great for kids who really need feeding help, but they should also listen when parents say their kids are healthy and thriving instead of creating problems during a time that is already fraught with worry."

"I'm writing this review for any new patient putting this center on their GPS please do some research on more options. so my son was referred to start therapy here for OT and speech, for OT he started around 4 months ago and his therapist has no plan or any kind of effort during his session it look like he is killing time and for the past month my son is seeing only the intern and his therapist is not even in the room!!!! Like SERIOUSLY I'm paying all this money for therapy so my son can come and play with your intern to get trained thats unprofessional plus the lack of plan they have been playing only one game for the past 4 months!! Plus this therapist doesn't give any insight or effort to address my son issues, I'm taking my son back to his old place even if its further at least there he gets actual therapy with an experienced therapist not an intern Just saying look for other places where the therapist actually cares."

"Always friendly, genuine and attentive service. One may expect this as part of the job, but not all similar establishments are created equal. Working with children with any special needs can be (actually is) exhausting and can be overwhelming. My nephew comes here for Speech and O.T therapy, and each session ends with a concise recap of each session, which is helpful in an effort to eliminate any potential language barrier. There is something to be said about those who chose to make a career out of helping children and families. My family and I are thankful for everyone at VMCT who contributes to this cause, and do it with Grace."