What is it about?
People feel that they are not getting the best out of their multi-sensory rooms, this paper explores why.
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Why is it important?
Multisensory rooms can be transformative for people with complex disabilities, and they can also be disappointingly ineffective. Multisensory rooms can cost thousands upon thousands of pounds, and they can be created on a shoestring. More expensive, does not equal more effective. This paper explores what makes a multisensory room effective and what can prevent a multisensory room from being effective.
Perspectives
I have known life limited children in chronic pain experience rest in a sensory room, I've seen adults with limited mobility reach out in a sensory room, and I've heard non verbal children vocalise in response to a sensory room. I have also seen sensory rooms in states of disrepair, used as cupboards to house wheelchairs, and I have known more than one family remortgage their house and borrow money from friends in order to install a sensory room in their homes. I think it is vitally important that research explores more what makes multisensory rooms effective and what blocks them from being effective so that resources of time, energy, money, space, etc can be spent effectively.
Joanna Grace
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Multisensory rooms: essential characteristics and barriers to effective practice, Tizard Learning Disability Review, June 2020, Emerald,
DOI: 10.1108/tldr-10-2019-0029.
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