Green Pastures

The mayor of Ballymena, Cllr. Hubert Nicholl was at Green Pastures, the People’s Church (GP), in Galgorm last Thursday evening to declare a new special needs sensory room officially open.

The facility – which cost £7000 to install – is uniquely designed to stimulate all five senses. And it’s already being regularly used by around 30 youngsters with a variety of conditions including Asperger syndrome, autism and Down syndrome.

The room provides a bespoke, multi-sensory environment designed to encourage children with special needs to relax, learn to communicate more effectively and discover simple yet vital life-skills which they can easily translate to their lives outside the room.

The new resource is part of the outreach provided at GP by Kingdom Kidz, a ministry dedicated to supplying the physical and spiritual needs of special needs youngsters in the community. And ministry leader, Jenny Taggart, is the driving force behind the sensory room project:

“Some time ago, we came to the decision that we needed to increase our provision for the children we look after,” she told the Guardian. “We decided that a sensory room was what we needed and we began fundraising. Within four months, we’d managed to collect the money we needed through the parents of the Kingdom Kidz children, the congregation and donations from the community.”

The room itself is used every Saturday morning when the children come into the church for an hour-and-a-half, providing their parents with some valuable respite time. It’s also widely used during the church’s Sunday evening service. And during GP’s forthcoming Sonshine Week outreach programme (July 2 to 10), the room will be dressed to tie in with this year’s ‘jungle’ theme.

Also during the summer months, the local branch of disability charity, Mencap, will have access to the GP sensory room for its programme of holiday events. And another group – STARS Autism Project – which facilitates the parents and carers of autistic children to meet and share their experiences while their youngsters play in a safe environment, has also asked for access to the new resource.

One of those involved in advising volunteers and staff at GP has been consultant Tina Bell of MB Century Training, who says that one of the benefits of a specialised environment such as the sensory room is the emphasis placed on interactivity:

“We need to be able to give these children the ability to make choices for themselves and we can do that by, for example, presenting them with switches which they can turn on and off,” she explains. “That teaches them about cause and effect and gives them the ability to make changes in their own environment. Once they learn this concept, they can apply it in their own lives, perhaps to turn on a radio or a light. They know that when they flick the switch, something will happen.”

Also present for the official opening was Con Mullan of Tools for Living in Ballymena. Con has been involved in the development of multi-sensory environments for more than 20 years and he says that the next objective for the volunteers at GP should be to locate equipment similar to that found in the sensory room at other points around the church complex:

“Nothing which the children do in this room should be seen in isolation from the activities they undertake in their everyday lives,” he adds. “Also, much of what we have here is mobile, so there’s no problem with shifting it around. In fact, some places actually have ‘lending libraries’ of equipment, so parents are able to take items home with them.”

As for the long-term future of Kingdom Kidz at GP, Jenny Taggart says that staff and volunteers are already considering additional forms of art and occupational therapy which could be added to the offering:

“We think of all of these children as beautiful gifts from God,” she says. “All we want is for them to grow and to flourish in the special talents that He’s given each of them.”