Whitby charity appeals for public to help keep its sensory room open
WHISH says the cost of running the facility keeps increasing
A charity in Whitby is appealing for the public to help keep its sensory room open.
The parent-led support group, Whitby Hidden Impairments Support and Help, says the cost of running the facility keeps increasing.
It provides the sensory room for free to its members.
Ellen Unsworth is a project worker at WHISH and said:
"A sensory room is a safe space for anyone of any age to meet their sensory needs. It's a space where you can hit things, cuddle up, feel vibrations, look at pretty lights et cetera.
"If you have a child who's afraid of maybe a loud noise going off, you can take them into the sensory room and just give them a CD where loud noises come on occasionally and by being in a safe space where nothing will happen to them, they'll learn to trust the world around them and to develop their senses a bit more.
"The sensory room is not designed to make money, it never will be, but it does take a lot of money to run. The room hire itself is expensive, the cost of the equipment is absolutely astronomical, we had a service in there recently and the cost of running it is just going up year by year and because we run it free to our members, WHISH takes the cost on itself.
"When WHISH closed under lockdown, the sensory room was the one space that WHISH members missed the most. It was a space where their children could decompress after a school day, where they could let go of their worries and they really felt that loss. Parents were asking us when it would be safe to re-open.
"Children who came in who were aggressive, on edge, nervous or anxious, after half an hour in the sensory room, they began to feel so much more emotionally controlled and better because they had that space to let out their worries, and it gave their parents a bit of time and space that wasn't within the four walls of their house."
To donate to WHISH Whitby, visit their website.