Poole Refuge ‘Helping Hands’ Charity’s next project is a ‘Therapy, Activity and Therapeutic/Sensory Play - Room’, a multifunctional space.

As I’m sure many are aware due to the nature of a Domestic Abuse Refuge, children and their parent are not allowed any friends to visit as the location must remain highly confidential because some perpetrators can go to extraordinary lengths to find them. This is why it is important that we have a space where children and adults can be stimulated and have space to personally develop. Our aim as Poole Refuge ‘Helping Hands’ charity after consultation is to make everyone’s stay at refuge a positive experience, enhancing self-esteem and enabling positive future independence. During Covid lockdown we have realised the desperate need for this project to be completed as soon as possible, so that real healing can take place through a myriad of therapies, specialised activities and therapeutic sensory play for women, men who have suffered domestic violence and for the children who can be traumatised by the experiences they have witnessed and suffered.

Our vision for the Therapy, Activity and Therapeutic/Sensory Play - room is to provide and create a safe, confidential and caring environment which allows the child to play with as few limits as possible but as many as necessary and for adults to develop skills through a variety of activities. It will be a functional space to carry out a range of activities for children and adults allowing healing to occur on many levels. The Therapy, Activity and Therapeutic/Sensory play - room is the only communal space we have within the Refuge so we need the function of the room to suit a huge variety of sessions from Poetry and writing (which can be an excellent way to release emotions), Art, Yoga, Meditation and relaxation, along with educational sessions including Financial and IT skills. For children we would like to facilitate Music Therapy, Dressing-up outfits (allowing children to escape from the realities of life for a short while) Art, storytelling and play therapy sessions including sensory play. We envisage the Therapy, Activity and Therapeutic/Sensory Play - room to be a fun space with carefully researched therapeutic resources and interactive sensory toys for the children to be able to play and develop skills with their parents, professional therapists, volunteers and staff. Parents can develop their parenting skills which can help build better relationships because many children blame the abused parent for taking them away from their friends, schools and other parent.

The room will need to have storage to enable us to lock away all equipment needed to facilitate these sessions. By storing the equipment in a lockable unit, we can protect the equipment as well as protecting children from using equipment they need adult supervision for. We need to have furniture that will support the sessions such as a bench table and chairs suitable for adults and children. We envisage a kitchen area with an oven, hob, extractor, fridge, freezer and cooking equipment for demonstrations, cooking sessions for children and adults, and to make tea, coffees and refreshments during the social activities. Also, to have kitchen cupboards that are lockable to keep these facilities safe from children and isolate hob and oven switches. We hope this brief outline of the room we will be creating gives you a feel of what we are trying to achieve. Thank you in anticipation. Karen Norton (Trustee and Secretary) - Contact: karennorton@hotmail.com