We are Highgate Road - Harmony Care Residential care home in Walsall and we care and support for 5 people with mild to severe learning disability and other complex and physical disabilities. All our service users have lived at Highgate Rd for many years and we have a staff team who are dedicated to support them to live the life they wish to, we see everyone as family and we all want to do something speacial for our service users.

The staff team want to raise money to build a sensory room in the care home so that the service users have unlimited use & access where they can benefit greatly from being in their own enviroment. However this doesnt come cheap as the sensory room equipment will be speacially designed for our service users and their unique needs in mind.

SO WHAT IS A SENSORY ROOM?

A Sensory Room, is a specially designed room which combines a range of stimuli to help individuals develop and engage their senses. These can include lights, colours, sounds, sensory soft play objects, aromas all within a safe environment that allows the person using it to explore and interact without risk.

Sensory Rooms can help those who have learning difficulties, developmental disabilities or sensory impairments learn to interact with the world around them, but in a safe environment that builds up their confidence and their ability. The user gets an unrestrained non-threatening space where they can explore at their own leisure. This freedom lets their carer see what calms them, rouses them and what they like or don’t.

No sensory room should be the same as another, they should be a truly unique environment, where the stimuli are designed to meet the needs of the individuals that use them

BENEFITS OF A SENSORY ROOM

There are a whole host of benefits of a sensory room for those who require them, some of these include:

Sensory Stimulation – by encouraging the user to engage and explore the environment then it can have positive effects on their ability to react and interact with the larger world around them

Enhance Learning and Play – following on from this, sensory stimulation can engage different areas of the brain, helping children absorb and retain more information and better meeting the needs of the individual

Improve Balance, Movement and Spatial Orientation - Sensory rooms can help develop users’ visual processing abilities as well as their fine and gross motor skills, facilitating day-to-day living.

Tackle Problems With Behaviour - Sensory environments can be highly absorbing, providing a moment of comfort and calm for overactive and distressed individuals, and helping inactive individuals to feel better engaged. This improves focus and prevents users from getting the urge to ‘act up’.

These are just a handful of the benefits of a sensory room and different products and methods of coping with learning difficulties, or sensory development problems will have different effects on different users, hence there being a need for having a unique environment.

To raise money for this fantastic sensory room our staff team will put themselves through grooling traning to take part in several events throughout the year so please help us make this happen.

.