Category Archives: Installations

Rompa install sensory rooms the length and breadth of the country but we’re not limited to the UK and have traveled as far as the US, Canada and Eastern Europe to work our sensory room magic.

Celebrating the festive season with a person who has dementia

Elderly ChristmasAs we get closer to the Christmas holidays the question of how to make it a pleasurable experience for a person with dementia is always a big question. Essentially, this time of year can be rather overwhelming for all of us with increased noise, hustle and bustle and flashing lights. It can also be an opportunity for sensory stimulation and reminiscence. Below are my ten top tips for a calm and enjoyable Christmas.

  1. Start slowly and gradually – don’t introduce all the decorations at once. This can make the environment feel unfamiliar and increase a sense of disorientation.
  2. Encourage the person with dementia to take part in putting up decorations – they may not do it quite like you planned but doing a job and seeing it through can give you a great sense of achievement.
  3. Noel Festive Room SpayUse a multi-sensory approach – Christmas is an opportunity to great an multi-sensory atmosphere. We focus a lot on lights but what about the smell of cloves and cinnamon, carols with a slow tempo, textures of making holly wreaths, baking mince pies.
  4. Create oasis of calm – if people are coming to visit give the person with dementia time to adjust to the noise level and create quiet time after the visitors have left.
  5. Talking Photo AlbumHelp the person with dementia feel included – when visitors arrive provide some props to help they create conversations with the person with dementia such as a photo album of familiar photos or an item from a past interest. Basically focus on the memory they have.
  6. Pace yourself – don’t plan too much as transitioning from one event to another can be overwhelming.
  7. The Christmas diary – create a Christmas diary and put in a place where the person with dementia can see it. Keep it straight forward with the day and what is going to happen. Refer to it to help the person with dementia prepare.
  8. Remembering Christmas past – use Christmas events as an opportunity to reminisce. Christmas photos, old Christmas decorations and family stories all help generate conversations.
  9. Social Games Saver PackBeing part of Christmas – sometimes you don’t have to be doing something all the time. Being on the edge looking in can be just as pleasurable, for example listening to carol singers, watching a children’s nativity play or watching a game of charades being played out.
  10. Make sure you have some quiet time too – put on some favourite music, dim the lights and have a good multi-sensory holiday.

Weighted Blanket and Vests – Tips and Hints

Weighted BlanketOur nervous systems can be challenged in responding to changes in daily rhythms of light and dark, sleep, eating, and physical activity. For people who are sensory sensitive and rely on routine, predictable sensory experiences to function well, the holiday season can be a strain on one’s inner resources and adaptability in managing the day to day.

Wristful FidgetTo help balance the effect of the stressors of the season, it is important to take care of the needs of our nervous system which influences immune health, sleep, and mood. It may be helpful to think about how to maintain some basic rhythms and routines in these areas:

  • Sleep: going to bed at a similar time with adequate time and space before bed to downshift into sleep and waking in time to start the day without rushing.
  • Exercise: making time for physical activity that brings joy, pleasure, and stress release.
  • Nutrition self-care: taking care to drink and eat soothing and nourishing foods, such as herbal teas and soups.

Weighted VestIncorporating weighted items into more daily activities at home, such as using the Sleep Tight weighted blanket while watching a movie before bed, or the Wristful Fidget wrist bands while eating breakfast, can add calming and organizing sensory input to moments of the day.”

Weighted Products for Sensory Processing Disorders

What is a sensory processing disorder?

Weighted Vest

Weighted Vest

Children with sensory processing disorder have difficulty processing information from their senses (touch, movement, smell, taste, vision and hearing) and responding appropriately. These children typically have one or more senses that either over, or under react to stimulation. Sensory processing disorder can cause problems with a child’s development and behaviour.

How is a sensory processing disorder treated?

Weighted Blanket

Weighted Blanket

Sensory integration therapy, usually conducted by an occupational or physical therapist, is often recommended for children who have sensory processing disorder. It focuses on activities that challenge the child with sensory input. The therapist then helps the child respond appropriately to this sensory stimulus.

Therapy might include applying deep touch pressure to a child’s skin with the goal of allowing him or her to become more used to and process being touched. Also, play such as tug-of-war or with heavy objects, such as a medicine ball, can help increase a child’s awareness of her or his own body in space and how it relates to other people.

Although it has not been widely studied, many therapists have found that sensory integration therapy improves problem behaviors.

Heavy Work and sensory processing issues

Weighted Lap Pad

Weighted Lap Pad

A child may get a number of therapies to help with his or her sensory processing issues. Specialists who work in this area may recommend some therapies that you have not heard of. Using weighted sensory products is sometimes called “heavy work”. Occupational therapists use weighted blankets, weighted vests and other weighted items to help children who desire or reject certain kinds of sensory input.

Proprioception and Heavy Work

We typically think of five senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. There are two other senses that can affect motor skills. One controls balance and movement and is called the vestibular sense, the other controls body awareness and is called proprioception or the proprioceptive sense.

Weighted Cutlery

Weighted Cutlery

If the receptors in a child’s muscles and joints are not communicating effectively with their brain it may affect their ability to do certain tasks. A child may write too lightly with their pencil or slam a door because they’re not aware of their own strength. When children struggle with this sense, weighted products help them know where their body is and what it should be doing. This type of therapy is also called heavy work.

How Heavy Work Can Help Kids With Sensory Processing Issues

Some children with sensory processing issues may need extra help with the the systems that control balance, movement and body awareness. That’s where heavy work can help.

The Weighted Blanket Guide

The Weighted Blanket Guide

Heavy work is any type of therapy that encourages pushing or pulling against the body. Swimming or vacuuming could be considered as heavy work. Trampolining or hanging from bars could also be considered heavy work as the child is using their own weight.

Children with sensory processing issues often seek out or avoid sensory input. A child who is seeking input is looking for proprioceptive input. That’s because it can help calm her body and make her feel more oriented in space. Without heavy work therapeutic activities, the child may seek input by running into or bouncing off things in unsafe manner.

Heavy work is designed to provide the required sensory stimulous in safer, more controlled way. The most effective heavy work therapies use lots of different muscles and joints at the same time, for a short periods of time. This makes some heavy work activities swimming more effective than others.

Dr Anna van der Gaag talks to us about the CASP assessment tool

Dr Anna van der Gaag CBE talks to us about her background and the Communications Assessment Profile also known as the CASP profiling tool.

What’s your background?

Anna van der Gaag

When I finished school, I had little idea of what I wanted to do, and ended up volunteering in a school for children with learning disabilities. I met Pat Stephenson, a speech and language therapist, who encouraged me to apply, despite my lack of any science A levels. Much to everyone’s surprise, I was accepted at the National Hospital College of Speech Sciences (now UCL) in London, and qualified in 1981.

Immediately after I qualified, I went to India to work as a volunteer for 8 months, and when I returned I found myself in Glasgow, where I first encountered an “Adult Training Centre” for adults with learning disabilities. It very quickly became clear that all the communication assessments that used to assess adults had been developed for children. I returned to London a few years later, determined to use my Masters degree at the University of London as a route to developing an assessment designed for use with adults. It took many more years than my masters to complete this work, and I was fortunate to have the support of various research grants that allowed me to complete the work.

The Communication Assessment Profile was first published in 1988. It remains the only communication assessment standardized with adults – over the course of three clinical trials, its reliability and validity were tested with over 350 individuals, 66 SLTs, and 384 care workers working in 21 hospitals and 31 Adult Training Centres across the UK. We were incredibly fortunate to achieve this level of testing before we published the final version of the CASP. Since then, CASP has been updated, modernised and revised, with input from UK users and therapists, and is now in its third, colour, edition. All the data from the reliability and validity studies are included in the CASP manual. I am grateful to all those who took part and to the many people who helped me along the way.

Who can use CASP?

CASP is designed for individuals with learning disabilities, used by speech and language therapists, psychologists and OTs, working with care workers, peers and families. It has also been used with young people on the autistic spectrum and with adults with dementia (particularly the section on communication environment and vocabulary use).

What was the purpose behind CASP?

CASP Assessment ToolThe drive behind the research was simple – to develop a way of assessing communication skills of adults with learning disabilities that was respectful, relevant and robust. This meant using age appropriate photographs and materials, like money, toothpaste and shoes, rather than toys and farm animals.

There were three other important innovations – CASP was designed as a joint assessment – in which the care worker who worked most closely with the individual – was given a formal role in assessing communication. Hard to believe, but this was highly contentious at the time, as many professionals said they did not think that an ‘unqualified’ person should have a formal role in assessment. I argued that care workers (this included family members too) were frequently the people who really knew what was happening on a day-to-day basis and knew the most about the person’s experience of communication. Click here to find out more.

The second was that the CASP assessed not only the individual’s speech and language skills, their understanding and expressive skills, but also their communication environment, and the demands made upon them to use their skills. We conducted a piece of research which showed that adults with learning disabilities under-utilise their communication skills if they live in poor communication environments (click here to read this) and published this work in a paper called ‘the view from Walter’s window’ in 1989.

The third innovation was that CASP was designed to assess and build upon the person’s strengths – now called an ‘asset based’ approach – rather than their ‘deficits’ or what the person cannot do. The final part of the assessment is when the therapists, the individual and their care worker come together to talk about ‘priorities for change’ – which might mean change in their communication or it might mean change in their environment and the way that people around them communicate.

I’m delighted that all three of these innovations – seen as radical in the 1980s, have now become mainstream, part of how we approach our work, with many new advances and further innovations along the same lines occurring across the globe. CASP is now used in other parts of Europe, Canada, the US and Australia and New Zealand as well as continuing to be used in the UK. It has stood the test of time, I think, because it reflects contemporary approaches to working with people, rather than (as was the case) doing things to them.

What’s been your inspiration?
My inspiration was a man called William, who came to me for help during my years working as an SLT in Glasgow. He helped me make a short film about the CASP, and was as excited as I was that at last there was something that respected him as an adult. He had very limited expressive skills but his understanding of language far exceeded his ability to make himself understood – and he, like others, had suffered from discrimination, having been dismissed or ignored because he could not communicate like everyone else around him.

The other inspiration was a book by Joanna Ryan, called the ‘Politics of Mental Handicap’ (the title shows how long ago that was!) in which she exposed the systemic discrimination against people with learning disabilities that existed at the time. My sense from my days working in Glasgow was that people with learning disabilities and communication difficulties experienced even more discrimination – and part of my goal was to design an assessment that they were comfortable with, that showed them the respect they deserved, and was based on rigorous research.

Over the last few decades, I have been involved in teaching, research and regulation and have worn many hats. When I look at CASP, I feel that this is work I am most proud to have started, and most pleased that it continues to have practical relevance to the lived experience of people with learning disabilities.

References

The view from Walters window (1989)
van der Gaag, A (2009) eliminating professional myopia

The Wonkey Donkey and Rompa

What is Wonkey Donkey I hear you ask? Well the clue is in the name – Wonkey Donkey is a donkey sanctuary and visitors centre that looks after over 21 Donkeys. What makes this Donkey Sanctuary unique is that they have a vision to make their sanctuary more accessible to disabled, elderly and autistic visitors.

Where does Rompa come in?

Rompa has been working with the Wonkey Donkey for over 2 years now. The story began when our MD visited the sanctuary with a friend. She was amazed at what was being done for the animals and was then thrilled to find out that the centre wanted to make themselves more accessible to disabled visitors. During her visit she noticed a small boy with autism at the sanctuary, he had a great time with the Donkey’s but unfortunately when his parents wanted to take a well-earned break in the café there was nothing to comfort him. This visit sparked a long term relationship between Rompa and Wonkey Donkey which followed in the sanctuary installing a sensory area and ball pool.

Accessible days out

For individuals with a disability having a day out somewhere can be a stressful ordeal and often leads to sensory overload, especially for people with hidden disabilities such as autism. Providing a space for people to calm down such as the sensory room at Wonkey Donkey is an excellent way to not only help these people and broaden your market. Autism effects 1 in 100 people in the UK which is over 700,000 in total.

Rompa are proud to work with Wonkey Donkey as they provide an inclusive family day out. For more information take a look at the Wonkey Donkey website www.wonkey-donkey.co.uk

Purple Tuesday – The UK’s Accessible Shopping Day

For people with hidden disabilities a shopping trip can be an overwhelming ordeal as loud noises, bright lights, crowds and unusual smells flood the senses. This experience can leave an autistic child (for example) feeling very agitated and unhappy, making the shopping trip impossible for both them and their parent or carer. This is one of the many reasons why the disability organisation Purple, with endorsement from the Department for Work and Pensions have introduced Purple Tuesday.

Taking place on Tuesday 13th November 2018, Purple Tuesday is the UK’s first accessible shopping day. On this day major retailers and shopping centres are expected to promote accessible shopping by making one long term commitment which makes their venue more inclusive and improves the shopping experience for disabled customers. This could mean installing a sensory room where people with hidden disabilities can go to for some quiet time after or during the shopping trip or introducing a quiet hour.

Making Shopping Inclusive is big business

  • The purple pound is worth £249 billion to the UK economy
  • Autism affects 1 in 100 That’s over 700,000 people in the UK which means that
  • Approximately 2.8m people have a relative on the Autism Spectrum.
  • More than 11 million people in the UK are considered disabled

Rompa proudly supports Purple Tuesday and similar initiatives

Rompa have worked with many businesses in the retail sector that have taken the initiative to make their venues more inclusive. For example, Meadowhall Shopping centre asked us to provide a pop-up sensory room in aid of Autism Awareness Week. The feedback from this was so positive that a permanent sensory room has now made an addition to their facilities as well as a Rompa corner kit being installed into the baby changing area.

Here at Rompa we provide a variety of products for not only shopping centres to consider for Purple Tuesday but for parents and carers alike during their shopping trip. 

Take a look at our tactile range of products: https://www.rompa.com/purple-tuesday

Rompa Saver Packs… Saving you time and money!

Rompa’s range of saver packs have been specially selected by our product team and in some instances OT advisors. They are designed to help you to find what you need easily and with a saving.

With the end of year budgets rapidly approaching, if you are fortunate enough to have some cash left in the pot choose to invest it wisely in a Saver Pack.

From the immensely popular bubble tube corner kits to the smaller home packs there are a range of saver packs designed to help you.

Saving You Time:

Move & Groove Saver Pack

Lean on our expertise! We have selected the products for each kit with a specific application in mind. The saver packs range from more simplistic kits such as the Smells Set which has been designed to address a specific sense. To more complex such as the Sensory Circuits Saver Packs designed to provide all the equipment needed to provide a specific type of therapy. Each will save you time in selecting the products and ordering them individually.

 

Saving You Money:

Snoezelen® Bubble Tube Sensory Corner Kit

Alongside this saving of time often also comes a cash saving. Saver packs  come with a reduction in cost from under £10 to over £300 dependent on the size and scale of the saver pack.  This equates to a nice saving and provides our customers with the opportunity to access and try our products.

 

 

Rompa® quality that you can trust…

Rompa® have been providing Snoezelen® Multi-Sensory products for over 30 years. We’ve been established this long because our products have been built to last. Whilst there are seemingly similar options available on the market take a look at the reviews from our customers why you should choose Rompa®:

Colin E. Verified Buyer

Snoezelen® Bubble Tube Sensory Corner Kit
Excellent products and very useful to have everything you need in one package at a discounted price!
Find out more about our saver packs online now: www.rompa.com

Snoezelen Senstation – Taking the Sensory Experience to Where You Need It

Tired of taking people to the sensory room…? Ever thought of taking the room to the people who need it?!

Introducing the new Snoezelen® Senstation, the mobile unit that brings the key elements of a Snoezelen® Multi-Sensory Environment to you.

Includes Snoezelen® favourites such as:

Cost Effective

This all in one solution is a cost effective alternative to a Snoezelen® Multi-Sensory environment and is perfect for larger institutions who need to take the sensory products to various places in the building. At just £7995+VAT and without an installation fee this product is a fantastic alternative to having a Snoezelen® Multi-Sensory Environment.

360 of Snoezelen® Sensory Activity:

With products on each side the Snoezelen® Senstation provides stimulation for up to 4 people at once.

Make it your own:

Use the storage provided to personalise the experience by introducing smaller sensory products, favourite items or assessments.

Find Out More:

Visit: www.rompa.com/senstation or speak to one of our advisors on 01246 211 777.

Supporting The Special Olympics 2017

Sensory Bus at the Special Olympics 2017

When the opportunity arose to provide sensory support at the Special Olympics GB National Games we couldn’t wait to be involved. Our friends at Sparkle Sheffield arranged for us to bring the Sensory Bus to the Athletes’ Village situated at The Edge in Sheffield.

Why are Rompa Supporting the Special Olympics?

Rompa are providing a Snoezelen® sensory space for athletes who may become anxious or need to relax and manage their sensory needs. We will be supporting the Special Olympics all week until mid afternoon Friday.

Rompa sell Snoezelen® Multi-Sensory Environments and products throughout the UK. These products are often used to help people with Autism and Learning Difficulties. We thought it would be great opportunity to give something back and support the Athletes throughout the week.

As the athletes were arriving yesterday we had a lot of people take an interest in the bus, some of whom explained to us how sensory products such as the Infinity Panel and Snoezelen® Bubble Tube Sensory Corner Kit help them to relax.

Is the Sensory Bus Available For My Event?

The Special Olympics is an amazing event to be a part of and a great launch pad for the sensory bus! If you are organising an event and are interested in Rompa bringing the sensory bus please get in touch!  Call us on 01246 211 777 or email: [email protected] and we will give you a call to find out more!

Sensory Van

The Rompa Sensory Bus

We recently did our first out door show and decided that we needed a new way of showcasing our product range. To enable us to bring a Rompa Sensory Room to you, we have created the Rompa Sensory Bus!

The bus contains all the typical components of a normal Rompa sensory room but this one is installed in a large vehicle that we can take to shows and events up and down the country. The sensory bus has:

  • Rainbow bumpers
  • A tactile wall
  • A sensory room projector
  • A waterless bubble tube
  • An aroma panel
  • An interactive floor
  • An infinity and beyond panel
  • A colour changing panel
  • Fibre Optics

We think this will prove a great way to bring the concept of Snoezelen sensory environments to a wider audience and demonstrate the immersive quality of a Rompa sensory room.