Cape Town - Children at St Joseph's Home for Chronically Ill Children in Montana, Cape Town, are happy with their new sensory therapy room.
The room has different equipment that will help the children with their healing process.
It is meant to help with emotional regulation, learning, behaviour and participation in daily life.
The Home’s Occupational Therapist, Asgeree Dalvie, said the children are excited and fascinated to work with the new sensory room.
“They fight for turns to use the equipment.”
Dalvie said from a therapy point of view, children progress well and heal faster because of the sensory room.
“It brings fun to the healing process and recovery.
"They are usually confined in beds and not used to movement, but with this all that will change."
Faiza Achmat, the Rehabilitation manager, said the room is going to enable them to expand in terms of what to do in therapy.
She said they would now cater for the sensory therapy needs of the children because for the children to engage in different environments they needed to take control of their sensory systems.
“That is what the sensory room does it teaches children to desensitise.”
Alrika Hefers, a spokesperson, said when they renovated the home funding was mainly for the building structure and they still had to equip it.
“Spur Foundation helped us with the sensory room, which is very helpful and we are very happy and thank them.”
The Full Tummy Fund, an initiative of the Spur Foundation, which enables early childhood development and nutritional programmes among children from disadvantaged communities, donated the fund.
The foundation's Ronel van Dijk said it was about educating and looking after children and St Joseph's resonated with them.
She said they were happy to have assisted the home and were glad to to see the children using the sensory room.