Snoezelen Rooms

By Kate Heartfield

It is often difficult for Christopher Rangno’s teachers to understand what the 10-year-old is feeling. But there’s no mistaking the light in his eyes when teacher Kelly French places flexible plastic cords full of light on his hand. He puts one fibre-optic cable at a right angle to another, and says, "T?"

"Yes," says French, delighted. "Letter T. Very good, Christopher!"

Rangno is a student at Clifford Bowey Public School in Ottawa, which has had a Snoezelen room for almost two years.

This special room is white. Lights dance on the walls. A tub in the corner is full of translucent balls that light up. In another corner, a tube filled with bubbles changes colour according to which button is pushed on its base. Every spare area of wall has a mirror on it or a button to push or a whirling display.

For the children with disabilities and their teachers at Clifford Bowey, the Snoezelen room has been a blessing.

"Here, you just follow the kids around and let it happen," says French. "There’s no place to fail here. The only possibility is to succeed."

Snoezelen (pronounced SNOOZ-eh-len) comes from the Dutch words for "explore/sniff around" and "doze." The idea is to provide a relaxing atmosphere while stimulating four senses: touch, sight, sound and smell. The concept began in Holland in the 1970s.

Ten years ago, Canadian Barbara McCormack was looking for something to help her daughter, who has a disability. She helped set up the first Snoezelen room in Canada at Bloorview MacMillan Children’s Centre in Toronto in 1992.

McCormack is now head of the Canadian office for FlagHouse, the company that owns the rights to the Snoezelen name in Canada. FlagHouse has helped set up almost 300 rooms across the country.

Snoezelen is now used to help people with a variety of disabilities, from sensory disabilities to autism to Alzheimer’s. Snoezelen provides an easy way for everyone to experience choice and its consequences. Push the blue button, and the bubble tube turns blue.

"There’s a lot of opportunity to react and respond without intellectual reasoning," says McCormack. "Snoezelen is very pure... We tell the caregivers when they go into the room to forget everything they think they know about that individual and just give them a new chance, and observe."

French says the Clifford Bowey room often helps calm children down, or offers stimulation for children like Christopher. She says the room is having an effect on the children’s social behaviour, too.

"Two of them will sit down and play together, and that wouldn’t have happened anywhere else. That’s coming out in the classroom and the playroom, and that never happened before."

Extendicare/Laurier Manor in Ottawa uses its Snoezelen room to prepare its senior residents for naps, to calm them down, or even to trigger memories in some residents with memory loss.

The room at Laurier Manor is simpler than that at Clifford Bowey, and more geared to relaxation: a bubble tube and fibre-optics, a comfortable chair with vibrating cushion, soft music, lights and aromatherapy.

Activities coordinator Valerie Otterman designed the room two years ago. She says the results have been very positive for the residents.

"The moment they come down here and they hear the music in the hallway, they’ll say, ’I love this room.’ And these are people who don’t say much usually. To see this nice, mellow, comfortable side of them is a real treat," says Otterman.

Most of the research into sensory stimulation shows that it does help many people with a wide variety of needs, even if the reason it helps them is a little harder to prove.

McCormack says Snoezelen is not necessarily a therapy in itself, but an atmosphere for teachers or caregivers and people with disabilities to interact without expectations or stress.

At Laurier Manor, staff use the room to unwind at the end of a shift. At Magnetic Hill School in New Brunswick, the students with disabilities use a Snoezelen room - but so do the other students. Vice-Principal Carter Assels says the school’s goal is simply to provide a recreational space that everyone can enjoy.

"In North America, we tend to be very research-based. We want to quantify things," says Assels. "We’ve stayed away from all that here. It’s just here for people to enjoy."

The Magnetic Hill room cost about $30,000. Like many across the country, it was funded by Ronald McDonald Children’s Charities. Others are the result of dogged fundraising, and some have received support from government agencies.

Items in the FlagHouse catalogue can be expensive. Bubble tubes cost between $2,000 and $3,000, as do the fibre-optic light sprays that are mainstays of most Snoezelen rooms. Other items, such as mirror balls and sets of tactile toys, cost about $150.

McCormack says the prices reflect the special care taken to design durable, safe and interactive equipment with disabilities in mind.

Nonetheless, FlagHouse is selling a concept more than a product, and it encourages its clients to use their imagination. The Clifford Bowey room includes toys of different textures, colours and sounds, some of which were bought at dollar stores.

FlagHouse sells a mobile Snoezelen cart equipped with many products for about $6,000. The Riverdale Hospital in Toronto outfitted its cart for about $10,000 in 1999.

Mary Wilson, who runs the Snoezelen room at Riverdale, says she would like to see the hospital find the money for a dedicated room one day. For now, the cart still makes patients’ eyes light up. One woman with an anxiety disorder recently unclenched her hands and began to braid the fibre-optic strands.

"The nice thing about the cart is that you can take it into patients’ rooms, especially for those who maybe can’t get around so easily," Wilson says.

McCormack says FlagHouse will continue to develop carts over the next few years. The company is developing larger mobile units as well, and outdoor "sensory arbours" and spas.

"We’re finding ourselves thinking about a lot of different spaces," says McCormack. "I’ve been doing this for 10 years and I still get excited when I go into a room.

"It never ceases to inspire. Never."

Kate Heartfield is a freelance writer living in Ottawa, Ontario.




SNOEZELEN ROOMS ACROSS CANADA

Halifax Developmental Preschool (Joseph Howe School)
Halifax, NS
Contact: Patti Kent, (902) 423-4702

Pavilion Ste. Marie
Lafontaine, QC
Contact: Francine DesRosier, (450) 438-3583

Joseph Charbonneau
Montreal, QC
Contact: Sylvain Perreault, (514) 596-4350

Extendicare Laurier Manor
Ottawa, ON
Contact: Valerie Otterman, (613) 741-5122

Bridgeview School
Point Edward, ON
Contact: Deborah Seagar, (519) 337-3602

Bloorview MacMillan Centre
Toronto, ON
Contact: Lorraine Thomas, (416) 425-6220

Northwest Catholic School Division, Holy Family School
North Battleford, SK
Contact: Doug Steele, (306) 445-3993

Fort St. John Child Development Centre
Fort St. John, BC
Contact: Vera Busche, (250) 785-3200

Yukon Association for Community Development
Whitehorse, YT
Contact: Judy Pakozdy, (867) 667-4606