Using a Multisensory Environment

A Practical Guide for Teachers

Paul Pagliano

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781134125814
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides teachers and therapists with a user-friendly bank of practical ideas and suggestions to use in the MSE for pupils with profound and multiple learning difficulties. These include equipment and resources that can be used to engineer the environment to promote particular outcomes; a set of photocopiable, fast, easy to complete observation and assessment forms; a selection of practical strategies and methods that can be used in the MSE; and ideas to help teachers integrate environment, assessment and instruction to maximize individual programs.

1	The MSE: equipment, resources and outcomes

Introduction

Every child develops and learns in his or her own unique way, through interacting with the particular environment he or she lives in. When a child is able bodied, interaction is spontaneous and natural, so that the relationship between the child’s development and the environment is generally taken for granted. Only a highly deprived environment will stunt the child’s biologically predetermined progression through the developmental milestones.

A sense impairment compromises development, because necessary prerequisites to the next stage of learning may not have been laid down. A profound impairment can impede the spontaneous and natural process of development and learning to such an extent that, unless the environment is shaped in certain ways to be supportive, the child will have great difficulty making sense of the world.

In a multisensory environment (MSE) stimulation of a multisensory nature is precisely shaped to match the exceptional multisensory needs of the user. Essentially the goal is to enable the user to make more purposeful use of his or her remaining sense abilities.

The MSE can be used with a wide range of individuals. However, the particular focus of this book is to consider the use of the MSE with children with profound multiple learning difficulties (PMLD).

Where did the multisensory environment (MSE) come from?

The evolution of the multisensory environment can be traced back to three separate technological and sociological changes that occurred in the 1970s. These developments were the discotheque, soft play equipment and new services for people with disabilities (Hirstwood and Gray 1995).

The emergence of the discotheque was a high point in the use of industrial psychology to create a multisensory environment for entertainment. Loud rhythmic music coupled with sophisticated, sound-activated lighting helped create an environment with an exciting visual and aural ambience. Miniaturisation made the discotheque portable. Equipment became relatively cheap and accessible. Accompanying the technological developments was a sociological change in expectations. The use of environmental effects to create atmosphere for a set purpose, particularly entertainment, became common-place and accepted.

The 1970s also witnessed a steady increase in the number of mothers returning to work soon after childbirth. The resultant burgeoning child care industry created increased demand for safe, all-weather play environments that were stimulating and meaningful for very young children yet easy to clean and maintain. In parallel with these sociological changes were important technological developments in the plastics industry. These included:

• the popularisation of PVC, a lightweight, waterproof, synthetic material which could be used to cover foam rubber to make construction shapes and soft furnishings;

• the invention of Velcro, a material which could provide strong, easy, instant fastening and unfastening;

• the appearance of large shape, hard plastic moulding for the manufacture of lightweight, colourful, sturdy playground equipment.

Nowadays toyshops are filled with a seemingly limitless variety of soft play equipment.

Services for individuals with disabilities also underwent considerable change in the 1970s. These included:

• deinstitutionalisation, the process of moving individuals with disabilities out of institutions into society;

• mainstreaming, the process of moving children with disabilities out of segregated special schools into regular schools (the least restrictive environment) for the purpose of education with their nondisabled peers;

• normalisation, the process of making the life and environment of individuals with disabilities as normal as possible.

Educational and social services replaced the medical model, where disability is assumed to be a disease or condition which requires amelioration, with the ecological model, where emphasis is placed on viewing the individual in complex interaction with the environment. The professional as expert was similarly reframed as the professional as collaborator and team player, whose goal is to assist the individual with the disability to become as self-determining as possible. These changes were seen as keys to ensuring that people with disabilities achieve a higher quality of life.

The MSE arose from these three developments for the following reasons. The discotheque provided the technological know-how to create exciting multisensory environments. The discotheque also changed social expectations regarding the use of environmental effects within the built environment. The development of soft play environments meant these environments could now be made to suit even the most rudimentary of ability levels yet still remain safe, easy to clean, all-weather places. Deinstitutionalisation, mainstreaming and normalisation helped make life for people with disabilities more like that for the nondisabled population. The move from the medical model to the ecological model helped emphasise the importance of age and level-appropriate environments that were stimulating and meaningful for the person with the disability, where the individual could show preferences and exercise free choice.

Snoezelen

In the late 1970s a series of sensory rooms (tactual, aural, visual, ball bath, water, smell and taste) were created at the De Hartenberg Centre in The Netherlands. These rooms were for relaxation and stimulation, hence their name, ‘snoezelen’ a contraction of the Dutch words ‘snuffelen’ to smell and ‘doezelen’ to doze. Hulsegge and Verheul wrote about these ‘snoezelen’ rooms in their book Snoezelen: Another World (1986 Dutch, 1987 English). The ‘snoezelen’ combined the visual and aural ambience of the discotheque with soft play furnishings to create multisensory environments.

Hulsegge and Verheul’s (1986/7) ‘snoezelen’ philosophy was based on the premise that an appeal to primary sensations was a more immediately powerful means of contacting a person with severe disability than any initial appeal to intellectual capabilities. Their ‘snoezelen’ was essentially a place for recreation where learning was viewed as being of secondary or incidental importance. The emphasis was on the person with the disability being in control with a nondisabled person as the facilitator. When communication difficulties made the likes and preferences of the person with a disability unclear, facilitators were encouraged to carefully observe and adopt a ‘critical attitude’ (p.10) regarding their observations of the person in the ‘snoezelen’.

Active centres or dumping grounds?

Hulsegge and Verheul (1986/7) criticised their own work saying it lacked ‘a solid theoretical basis’ to guide and inform ‘snoezelen’ use. Furthermore they stated that their philosophy lacked ‘uniformity’ (p. 127).

For example, on the one hand the authors argued that ‘“Snoezelen” is an activity where ‘expertise’ is not absolutely necessary’ (p. 116), yet on the other hand, they emphasised the need for ‘careful observation [of the person with PMLD] … in order to recognize, register and translate signals’ (p. 126). The authors thought the facilitators needed to rely on ‘intuition’ yet needed to maintain a ‘critical attitude’ (p. 10). The authors also claimed ‘Learning is not a must, but they [the individuals with PMLD] should be given the opportunity to gain experience’ (p. 23).

The theoretical vacuum and the internal inconsistencies resulted in serious problems of interpretation. This in turn resulted in a range of ‘snoezelen’ experiences from good to bad. Kewin (1991) identified the good in terms of improved relationships between the facilitator and the user:

As relationships between users and helpers develop within Snoezelen and we focus more on sensory experience and communication, there can be a freeing up of carer/participant relationships. People are more readily accepted as interesting in their own right as we learn much more about their likes and dislikes.

At the other end of the spectrum Hopkins and Willetts (1993) observed, ‘When these places are badly used, the children become passive and confused by competing stimuli, causing them to retreat into a withdrawn state’ (p. 26).

Not all ‘snoezelen’ facilitators bothered to facilitate. Some staff simply used the facility as a space to place individuals with disabilitie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• 1 The MSE: equipment, resources and outcomes
• 2 Assessment in the MSE
• 3 Instructional strategies and methods in the MSE
• 4 Programme-environment-individual fit in the MSE
• Appendix 1 Multisensory Environments – Information Sheet
• Appendix 2 MSE Parent/Caregiver Questionnaire
• Appendix 3 Functional Proprioception
• Appendix 4 Functional Taste and Smell
• Appendix 5 Functional Touch
• Appendix 6 Functional Hearing
• Appendix 7 Functional Vision
• Appendix 8 Functional Engagement
• Appendix 9 Functional Communication
• References
• Index