“There are no guarantees in life, except that everyone faces struggles. This is how we learn (and grow). Some face struggles from the moment they are born. They are the most special of all people, requiring the most care and compassion and reminding us that love is the sole purpose of life.”– Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
These are our Hidden Angels – teaching all of us life’s most valuable lessons.
Multisensory room aids those with cognitive, behavioral disabilities
October 20, 2013 DETROIT LAKES, Minn. – When you first enter, a multisensory room looks kind of boring – it’s all done in white at the Developmental Achievement Center in Detroit Lakes.
So much for first impressions. When it’s in full operation, the room is like a 10-year-old’s dream bedroom: Pillars of bubbling water in one corner change color on command, or in response to the music. A waterbed surrounded by cushy mats occupies one wall and a vibrating bed occupies another.
Unbreakable mirrors of various sizes and shapes are in three of the corners, weighted strings of LED lights are within easy reach of both beds, a strobe light and mirrored disco ball are ready to give the room a dance party atmosphere, and a projector with attachments can create a wide selection of picture shows, shapes and colors on the walls and ceiling – depending on the needs of the client.
It’s all about the client’s needs at the DAC, and the $50,000-plus multisensory room can calm an anxious person or fire up a withdrawn one.
That’s why the room starts out neutral, all in white, and is adjusted slowly according to the client’s “sensory diet,” said job trainer Darcy Jahnke. She and her cousin, program supervisor Cheryl Jahnke, put the room through its paces recently for a reporter and photographer.
The multisensory room gives clients with cognitive impairments and other challenging conditions the opportunity to control all sorts of experiences.
These people rarely get to interact with the world the way most people take for granted.
“Limitations of movement, vision, hearing, cognitive ability, constrained space, behavioral difficulties, perception issues, pain, and other problems create obstacles to their enjoyment of life – multi-sensory environments provide opportunities for bridging these barriers,” according to the Hidden Angel Foundation.
Along with the Bremer Foundation and Wells Fargo Bank, the Hidden Angel Foundation helped pay for the multisensory room at the Developmental Achievement Center.
The Hidden Angel Foundation, which has helped fund more than 50 multisensory rooms, lists 19 benefits that come from using the room, ranging from increased concentration to improved coordination to a dramatic drop in stress levels.
“Time spent in a multisensory room has been shown to increase concentration, focus attention, improve alertness, awaken memories, and to improve mobilization, creativity, social relations and communications, and general awareness of the surrounding world.
“The varied optical, acoustic, olfactory and tactile stimuli help hyperactive individuals concentrate and focus better,” the foundation says.
But sometimes people are just having a bad day, or heading in that direction: The multi-sensory room gives stressed-out people the chance to relax and have fun as well.
The room opened in mid-July, and all but one client so far has enjoyed positive outcomes. “People who were agitated to begin with ended up happy, mellow, relaxed,” Darcy said.
The DAC serves 74 clients in its day program and another 30 in its residential program, Cheryl said.
“We’re still doing training on it,” she added. “We have a lot of clients, so we’re still finding out what people like.”
Source: INFORUM
Allegany Arc Opens MSE Room
May 09, 2013 – Allegany Arc is proud to announce the addition of a Multisensory room to its day-habilitation program. They recently held a ribbon cutting ceremony/opening reception to celebrate this achievement.
The Multi Sensory Environment (MSE) can stimulate or relax people through the use of touch, sound, vibration, color and/or light – effective in reducing stress and improving concentration, eye-hand coordination and motor function for individuals with special needs, developmental disabilities, mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, chronic pain, stroke, brain injuries, dementia and other conditions.
MSEs are designed to promote neurological activity and to encourage relaxation. A MSE is a dedicated space or room where sensory stimulation can be controlled (intensified or reduced), presented in isolation or combination, packaged for active or passive interactions, and matched to fit the perceived motivation, interests, and/or educational needs of the user.
In the room, Day Hab staff will teach/assist the program’s participants with sensory techniques to assist them to modulate to their level of arousal enhancing their ability to improve functional life tasks and enhancing their quality of life. The multi-sensory experience or stimulation of senses through the design provides tactile awareness, vestibular and proprioceptive motor planning, and visual and auditory stimulation. For example, an individual exhibiting oral motor or sensory issues would require the integration of the tactile and proprioceptive senses to be able to execute the various sounds required for speech production. Another example would be an individual diagnosed with severe Cerebral Palsy having tight contracted muscles. Individuals with contracted muscles relax during multi-sensory experiences which therapeutically increase range of motion.
Erin Baldwin, Allegany Arc’s Speech and Language Pathologist, said of this room, “this will stimulate all of the senses to organize an individual’s brain and improve functional activity. A basic human need essential for life and survival is sensory stimulation – this room provides just that.”
Michelle Parris, Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant, added, “We have been working diligently to implement a sensory environment that will assist in stimulating all of the senses for the majority of individuals we serve. We are so excited to finally have what we need in the multisensory room.”
Allegany Arc received grants from The Christopher Douglas Hidden Angel Foundation whose mission is to enrich the lives, health, and social well-being of people who are neurologically challenged through the use of multi sensory stimulation. They also received grants from Thomas F. & Laura L. Moogan Family Foundation Ltd. and Allegany County Area Foundation.
Allegany Arc is incredibly thankful for these agencies to assist in bringing such a necessary room to our agency.
Allegany ARC
Multisensory room aids students at Latrobe
October 11, 2012 – Owen Wege was getting his dose of sensory stimulation on Wednesday at Baggaley Elementary School, absorbing the sights of the colorful bubble tubes and a waterfall of lighted fiber-optic strands combined with the clashing sounds of cymbals, tambourines and soothing mood music.
The 9-year-old was joined by other youngsters participating in the open house for the Greater Latrobe School District’s new multisensory room that is specially designed to help children with autism deal with their anxieties and struggles during the school day.
“We treat it as part of their ‘sensory diet,’ said Kara Stenger, an autistic support teacher at Baggaley Elementary School in Unity. “For a student who is overstimulated, we can bring them in for calming,”
Autism is a complex developmental disability that causes problems with social interaction and communication, according to the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Different people with autism can have very different symptoms.
Stenger, who was a driving force behind the development of the room, said the teachers in the school’s autistic support classroom can bring their eight students in for 20-to-30-minute sessions in the multisensory room, which had been converted from a small conference room last month.
While some of her students were initially hesitant about playing in the room, that changed after they started using it, Stenger said.
“The kids are real excited, They’re kind of soaking it all in,” Stenger said.
The students are monitored by their teachers and a log is kept to see what works for each individual child — whether it is using a remote control to change colors of lights, laying on a water-filled pad or wrapping themselves in strands of the fiber optics, said Shelly Stillwagon, an assistant teacher in the autistic support classroom.
In some cases, students who are lethargic on a particular day can use the room to lift their spirits and energy, Stillwagon said.
Wege’s parents, Jen and Chris Wege of Baggaley, said their third-grade son really likes the room.
“It helps him calm down,” said Chris Wege.
The room got the stamp of approval from another student, Mies Chiang, 8, said his mother, Elizabeth Spaar.
“He loves it. He talks about it all the time,” Spaar said.
It cost about $24,000 to equip the room with the features needed to make it an ideal setting for the students with autism. Money was raised through contributions from nonprofit foundations and school fundraising efforts, Stenger said.
“It fills a need for this level of student. We would not be able to offer this room without the contributions,” said Judith Swigart, Greater Latrobe superintendent.
The features of the multisensory environment can help to reduce an autistic child’s anxiety by giving them the sensory input they need, said Kristin Gallagher of Jefferson Hills, the director of family support for the nonprofit Autism Center of Pittsburgh.
Having a room where the children can experience the sensory stimulation is so much better than trying to calm an autistic child by merely walking them down the hall, which won’t work, Gallagher said.
“This is absolutely a beautiful thing that the school district has done. I hope other schools will follow their lead,” said Gallagher, a Greensburg Salem graduate with three children who have the autism disorder.
SOURCE: Trib Total Media, Inc.
Classroom Dazzles with Disco Ball and Bubbles
Disco lights, music, and a lot of bubbles, are what students at the Regional School for the Deaf and Blind, get to experience in their brand new multi-sensory classroom. This room helps heighten the senses for students who have trouble hearing, or seeing. When the students come in here, the lights and sounds make them come alive. Therapist Amy Hess brought the idea to the school, after her internship at the University of California. She says, “The students come into the sensory room any time they need their system fed, whether its to calm down, or to relax.”
The room has a lot of bubbles tubes that change colors, a heated water bed for relaxing, and a ball pit that has vibrations in it. There are lights that change colors on the walls, and several places where students can hear different sounds and feel different vibrations. Principal Mary Lou Casey says the school raised thirty thousand dollars to build this state of the art room. “The fund-raising, the response we had from the community, from our staff, from the Hidden Angel Foundation, was just incredible.”
The multi-sensory room has quickly become the most popular room at the school, or at least the one with the most bubbles. Many students like to visit the room first thing in the morning to either get energized, or relaxed and focused to start their day.
SOURCE: www.wkrg.com
Baggaley Elementary School room appeals to senses
September 25, 2012 – A Baggaley Elementary School teacher is undertaking a big challenge to transform a small conference room into space that can be used to better the lives of children with autism.
A multisensory room in the Unity school will provide a controlled place where students with autism can interact with their environment, said Kara Stenger, an autism support teacher in the Greater Latrobe Area School District.
“The environment can be changed to reflect each individual’s needs. Many students with autism have difficulty with sensory processing. They do not process their environment as someone without autism would. Sights, sounds and temperature may really bother them or they may have no effect at all,” said Stenger, whose class has eight students in grades one through six.
After weeks of preparing the conference room to become a multisensory environment — removing tables, changing lighting and rearranging electrical outlets to suit the design — the district plans to open the multisensory environment to students on Wednesday , after a day of training for the school’s special educations teachers, Stenger said.
Upon entering, students will see two bubble tubes that change colors, a “vibromusic” platform that vibrates with music played in the room, soft padded play areas, mirrors, fiber-optics, a tactile board, bean bags, a sound system, a mirror ball and a projector for large-scale images.
Families can see and experience the room during an open house scheduled for 6 to 7 p.m. Oct. 10.
Students in Stenger’s class may use the room for varying lengths of time, based on their needs, she said.
The sensory stimulation can be intensified or reduced as needed. That stimulation can be presented in isolation or combination, packaged for active or passive interaction, and matched to fit the motivation, interests, leisure, relaxation and therapeutic or educational needs of the user, she added.
While the room has the elements of an area where students could play, it’s not intended for that, Stenger said. Teachers will monitor students’ use of the room.
“It’s not a place for the kids to come and do nothing. It’s for therapy, and this is part of their educational experience,” said Stenger.
Multisensory rooms are becoming more popular as a way of modulating the sensory system of children with autism, said Jeryl Benson, an assistant professor of occupational therapy at Duquesne University’s Rangos School of Health Sciences.
“Children with autism have sensory problems, and a lot of times, the information they are getting upsets them. They take it in and process it differently than others,” such as associating pain with a soft touch on the arm, said Benson, who has done clinical research on children with autism.
Rooms with specialized furnishings are important because they give the children “a chance to experience sensory information, but in a positive way,” Benson said.
Research has shown that people appear happier in a multisensory environment and tend to vocalize more and stay on task. For those with self-injurious or autistic behaviors, the gentle stimulation has a soothing effect and helps relieve agitation and promote relaxation, according to the Christopher Douglas Hidden Angel Foundation in Gadsden, Ala.
The school was involved in efforts that have raised more than $32,000 for the project, Stenger said.
Among those efforts, the McFeely-Rogers Foundation provided a $14,000 grant for the initiative, while the Hidden Angel Foundation provided an $11,740 grant. School groups raised $2,500.
The multisensory room cost about $24,000, and the remainder of the money raised was used to create a sensory environment room at Greater Latrobe Junior High School, Stenger said.
Several privately funded schools in the area have multisensory environment classrooms, Stenger said, but she believes Greater Latrobe will be the first public school in Westmoreland County with such a room. Stenger’s autistic support classroom has six students from the three elementary schools in Greater Latrobe and two students from Derry Area.
Stenger wants to continue fundraising efforts this year to provide satellite sensory environments at Greater Latrobe’s two other elementary schools and the junior high school.
“Our goal is to get a sensory corner in Mountain View Elementary School and Latrobe Elementary School. We recognize this isn’t the only school with autistic children,” Stenger said.
The Westmoreland Intermediate Unit provides several autistic support classrooms throughout the county, but not a multisensory environment.
“It is my hope that with the addition of a multisensory environment, we will be able to keep these students in their home district where their neighborhood friends and siblings are. Socialization is extremely important for students with autism, and building these friendships becomes much harder when the students are educated outside of their neighborhood school,” Stenger said.
Stenger’s students will continue to use her current classroom for academics. It has a small trampoline, some stress balls that youngsters can toss to release energy, rice bins, sand tables and special seats. That enables her and her teaching assistants to provide sensory input on a smaller scale, Stenger said.
“Our goal is to get those kids back to the regular classroom,” even if it is for just some classes, Stenger said.
Stenger said she believes the multisensory room could help more students than just those with autism.
“There are students in our school with visual impairments, certain speech and language impairments, and sensory needs that are not educated in my classroom. These students would also benefit from a multisensory environment,” Stenger said.
SOURCE: Trib Total Media, Inc.
Sensory Room Reveals New World for Students at Mobile School for the Deaf and Blind
(MOBILE, Ala.) – Pulsating music and bubbling lights!
At first glance, the darkened room with thumping bass and bubble light looks like some high tech dance club.
But it’s much more important than that. It is a sensory room.
And it’s the newest classroom at Mobile School for the Deaf and Blind.
“I’ve seen expressions and movements I have never seen from the students as long as I have worked with them!,” said Amy Hess, orientation and mobility specialist at the school. “So that is exciting! And school hasn’t even started yet!”
When school opens this fall, those youngsters with diminished sight and hearing abilities will suddenly be faced with a new world especially designed for them.
The room is meant to stimulate children who have trouble experiencing their surroundings, or to calm those who need to focus on the school day ahead.
“Or they can just come in here and play and have a good time!” said Hess.
The room was designed by Sandra Fornes, who began designing these rooms after seeing what they could do for her own son.
“We had a son with severe and profound disabilities,” she said, “and we found that when his senses were stimulated he was much more alert, happier, and we believe even healthier.”
It already seems to be working, says Emily Gray, as she watches her daughter recline in a huge box of plastic bubbles.
“Actually at home she loves the cd player and just touches it. She loves music and wants me to turn it on. She puts her head down to it. She loves the vibrations.”
Many words could be used to describe this room.
But one youngster, Nathan summed it up best. as he marveled at the tubes filled with bubbling colored water.
“Makes me feel like I’m in heaven!”
Regional School for Deaf and Blind gets new sensory room to stimulate, or relax students
MOBILE, Alabama — Tubes of yellow bubbles that can be changed to green or orange or red with the touch of a button.
A pit of iridescent plastic balls, big enough to sit in.
Plus a waterbed, vibrating platform and various objects to explore sound, including bells, tambourines and music.
These are the objects awaiting students in the new sensory room at the Southwest Alabama Regional School for the Deaf and Blind when they return to class later this month.
Sensory rooms, which are becoming more common for schools with disabled children and even in nursing homes for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, can be used to either stimulate or calm someone down.
Amy Hess, who teaches students mobility at the Regional School, said students often come to school excited and ready to learn. So, when it’s time to get to work they need to settle down. She said she anticipates bringing her students into the room so they can “chill and relax and get their fidgets out” as needed throughout the school day.
The school, which is located on Burma Road in west Mobile and is part of the Mobile County Public School System, has 76 students in pre-kindergarten through fifth-grade, and another 14 that it works with at the adjacent Kate Shepard Elementary.
Those students, as well as more from Little Tree Learning Center, for autistic children, and possibly some other schools, will now be able to use the sensory room, said Regional School Principal Mary Lou Casey.
“This opens up a whole new aspect of education for them,” Casey said. “That physical, emotional and social development.”
The Regional School received a $15,000 grant from Gadsden, Ala.-based Christopher Douglas Hidden Angel Foundation, which has installed nearly 50 sensory rooms in schools and other facilities throughout the United States and Canada over the last six years.
It matched those funds with grants from Community Foundation of South Alabama, the Mobile Area Education Foundation and Wal-Mart, and through fundraisers. The school sold $8,000 worth of colorful student art, some of which is now on display at car dealerships and other businesses around town.
Sandra Fornes, with the Hidden Angel Foundation, spent about a week designing the room, with blind and deaf students particularly in mind. In town installing the room this week, she put white mats all over the floor that students can be comfortable on, or that can be moved to give more access to students in wheelchairs.
The purpose of such rooms, she said, is to give people who otherwise have limited stimulation and control over their environments a chance to explore. Students can push buttons, or even breath into a device, to change all the colors, for example.
Fornes said she’s heard of students who are otherwise unresponsive coming into similar rooms and laughing and giggling. She said one school had an autistic child who spoke his first word in such a room: “blue.”
Many of the blind students at the Regional School have some vision, so they’ll be able to experience the colorful bubbles, hear them as they move up tubes and feel them vibrate.
Locally, the Augusta Evans Special School and Spanish Fort High School, which has a program for autistic students, have similar rooms.
Hess said she’s been wanting to build one for the Regional School for about 12 years now, since she interned at a school in California that has one. She spearheaded the fundraising and gave up her office for the space. “This is a dream come true,” she said as a group of adults explored the room Tuesday.
Night club like room offers special therapy to those with sensory problems
The Milwaukee Center for Independence offers children a new way for kids to interact with the world in a room that resembles a night club. Physical Therapist Kathryn Cabral says, “This is our multi-sensory environment that we bring children and adults with sensory processing issues to interact with the room, and have a new experience.”
Cabral has been working with the eight-year-old Deshawn, who suffered an anoxic brain injury in a house fire four years ago. As a result of Deshawn’s time at the Milwaukee Center for Independence, his grandmother is noticing improvements. She said, “The doctors told me he wasn’t going to be able to make it, but he’s doing a lot better. I mean, he’s doing stuff that I would never imagine he would do. But he’s doin it.”
The multi-sensory environment at MCFI can also be used to treat people with ADHD, autism, stroke victims, and many other sensory processing disorders. For more information on this room, go to the MCFI.net.
Allegany Arc Opens MSE Room
Allegany Arc received grants from The Christopher Douglas Hidden Angel Foundation whose mission is to enrich the lives, health, and social well-being of people who are neurologically challenged through the use of multi sensory stimulation. Read More
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 8
- Next Page »