Do Sensory Rooms Work?

A sensory room is a large purchase with a fuzzy return you cannot measure.

Behind every MSE enquiry is the same worry: we will spend a great deal, and someone will own the decision to give up a useful space, what for?

We know that sensory rooms are sometimes hot rooms packed with parked people: The supervisors on their phones; The children providing very little data for a researcher should they pop by. That may be how most rooms are used, like some abstract plotless immersive movie theatre and that is fine.

If people want to be there, its fine. Whatever the adults are doing, if the sensory room is chosen, settled into, returned to, then it’s working.

You are not buying a guaranteed outcome. You are buying a room that the people choose. A used MSE is all the proof we can get.

The rooms that thrive, in our experience, are owned by those that keep them working: the maintenance team.

So there we are, get the ownership and the design right and you should have a good Sensory room that meets expectations.

As for training we want everyone to be confident in using the room, we want the room to transform the building, that’s what we mean by fuzzy.

We believe it comes down to you.

The good stuff happens when the staff get in: the room stops being a pleasant place the children like and becomes the thing it can be. This is the prize, the space where child and supervisor meet as equals and the child finds their place in the tribe. High stakes indeed (according to Maslow).

The room is worth it without you. You are the upside. (You are also the reason we can't prove that they work).

Of course there is no proof that it works, its success is entirely dependent on you, you convert the no-harm cinema into the blossoming transformative classroom.