Snoezelen
"Opening up the world to those with a learning, physical or mental disability through a safe environment of discovery and learning"
Snoezelen is a multi-sensory centre offering hourly sessions to adults and children with learning, physical or mental disability from schools, children's centres, play associations, residential homes and day centres.
Social Care Solutions Snoezelen offer multi-sensory rooms, soft-play areas at two sites - at Twinwoods in Bedford and a second at Beech Close in Dunstable. We are able to offer clients the opportunity to relax and engage with their environment by exploring the interactive equipment which has been specially adapted to meet their needs.
Snoezelen Multi-Sensory environments
The idea of Snoezelen is to stimulate the pleasurable sensory experiences generated in an atmosphere of trust and relaxation. Day Care Solutions' Snoezelen combines a comfortable and safe environment where all the senses can be stimulated by a unique combination of music, lighting effects, soft play, tactile equipment and sound and smell devices. This stimulates all the senses and enables the individual to find their own ways of learning and communicating.
Multi-Sensory sessions provide a safe setting, stimulate the primary senses and are conducive to relaxation. This relaxed state within a safe setting, enables users to interact more easily with their environment, which can be adapted to meet individual needs. Growing an individual's confidence in interacting during Snoezelen sessions provides a firm basis for ongoing education.
Social Care Solutions centres provide a multi sensory space for children and adults to explore and discover different types of cause and effect and experiment with ways of communicating and learning, which respond to their unique set of needs and potential.
The centres' facilities include a waterbed, ball pool, soft wall and floor cushions, bubble tubes, projector and mirror ball, flexible light tubes and an interactive optic screen. It is both a relaxing and educational environment and is fully accessible to allow for children and adults in wheelchairs.
Music
Music is used to enhance cognitive skills as well as for its therapeutic effect. Regardless of the severity of an individual's disability, music can often be the one channel through which to make an emotional connection, and may be the only way that those who are non-verbal can communicate. Percussion instruments can help individual with manual difficulties by demonstrating an immediate cause and effect. Some of the instruments can be used in conjunction with fibre optic lights to provide a further level of stimulation. The broad ethnic mix and diverse age range of those attending SCS (DCS) centres is also reflected in the type of music offered, providing a wonderful expression of cultures and sounds.
IT
The IT rooms integrate computer-based sessions into the existing work of the Snoezelen centres. The hardware and software reflects a diverse range of disabilities and is suitable for children and adults with moderate learning difficulties. The equipment includes Widget Symbol Software, switches and roller ball so that people with limited mobility can access the technology by making simple hand movements. Simply written software teaches cause and effect and introduces different types of switching devices to enable progression onto more sophisticated work.
Meeting Users Needs
People with learning disabilities often lack the skills usually acquired during a child's physical and perceptual development. Our Snoezelen's specially adapted equipment assists the process of the co-operation of all the senses by improving Service Users concentration span while focusing on the equipment and props for periods of time. Multi-Sensory creative play for those with a learning/physical impairment can help to lay the foundation for developing the skills needed for academic, social and emotional learning.
Making Connections
Day Care Solutions believe that all disabled people should have the opportunity to overcome the barriers they face in communicating and learning. Through Snoezelen and Multi-Sensory leisure environments we can improve individuals' quality of life. We can enable the development of cognitive and motor skills, basic literacy, numeracy and life skills, improved behaviour, communication and the forming of relationships with others.
Day Care Solutions work with people of all ages, backgrounds and disabilities including Autism, Learning difficulties, Cerebral Palsy, Downs Syndrome, spinal injuries, muscular dystrophy, Hydrocephalus and Retts Syndrome, Mental Illness and Behavioural problems. Most have multiple disabilities.
Snoezelen benefits people of all ages:
Pre-School children with special needs: helps to put in place some of the foundations for learning that will enable them to achieve their potential when they start school.
Adults: can help open up new ways of communicating, basic life skills, confidence and self esteem and helps provide relaxation which can help with the management of anxiety.
Older People: can help increase the opportunity to communicate. It can also help with pain management, motor, sensory and cognitive functions and decrease levels of agitation, restlessness and aggression.
Disabled children in mainstream and special needs schools: can help identify strengths the child has in terms of sensory input and builds on them to devise learning programmes. It also helps stimulate cognitive abilities, by enabling children to use different ranges and combinations of senses to help identify a problem, analyse, solve it and learn from it. These programmes form part of their schools curriculum.
Teenagers: We help teenagers develop their communication skills, coping mechanisms when under stress or finding emotions difficult to understand and control which helps develop independence - all in a safe environment for them to try new activities such as using a computer.
Please find below a PDF document containing the Terms and Conditions relating to booking and use of the Snoezelen.
Snoezelen Terms & Conditions of Use:
PDF Format