EASTHAMPTON — Riverside Industries, an Easthampton organization that provides individualized services for adults with developmental disabilities, received a $25,000 donation from 47 local businesses, individuals, and the NiSource Foundation, to build a Life Enrichment Sensory Integration Room.
Located at the Riverside facility on Cottage Street, the room will contain equipment and activities such as swings, stationary bikes, exercise balls, trampolines, low-weight medicine balls, scooters and paddles, for people with varying abilities. There also will be aromatherapy, projectors, fiber-optic sensory equipment, a vibroacoustic music mattress, sensory body socks and other activities designed to improve fine motor skills.
The room also will have equipment to enable individuals who cannot walk to move throughout the space.
Sensory integration rooms are therapeutic spaces designed to improve the participants’ ability to control responses to what is seen, heard or touched.
“If you are eating a sandwich, rolling the wheels on your wheelchair, playing ball or reading a book, your successful completion of the activity requires sensory integration, when the signals get organized into appropriate responses,” said Amy Barker, RIVERSIDE’S director of life enrichment.
In people with sensory processing problems, this coordination between sensory signals and responses doesn’t occur making everyday tasks difficult. It can lead to motor difficulties, behavioral problems, anxiety and depression, according to The Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation, based in Colorado.
The equipment and activities in the new room will allow participants to practice and re-learn how to react to different stimuli, Barker said.
For those with cerebral palsy and other conditions that affect muscles, it will help alleviate muscle tightness and tension.
That will improve balance, body awareness, strength and motor coordination as well as mental health, self-esteem and social skills, according to the Sensory Processing Disorder Foundation.
Nisa Joy Zalta, director of development at Riverside, considers the sensory integration room a gym for people will developmental disorders. She says the therapy the room will provide is the most pressing need at Riverside today because it will help integrate people with developmental disabilities into the community.
“There is an unprecedented increase in the diagnosis of young adults with autism spectrum disorders,” she said. “They are aging out of the school system at age 22, and Riverside will be well positioned to meet their particular needs for sensory processing.”