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Dear all,

 

First of all, we would like to thank the organizers of this congress for the opportunity they gave us to share our experiences with you all. Thank you the whole organisation team, and congratulations for having done such a great job!

We come from Catalunya, where we work in a medium-sized city: Amposta. Our organisation, APASA, looks after people from the town and county who deal with intellectual disability. Our organisation looks after more or less 150 people with ID from several ages (from 3 to 79 years old) and with different levels of disability. We offer several services: special education school, occupational center, day-care specialised center and residential units.

Since 2001 we’ve had a Snoezelen space, which was one of the first to be built in Spain. Since then, we have evolved, changed and also made some mistakes in the use of snoezelen techniques. In Spain, snoezelen intervention is not regulated at all, and so a lot of snoezelen spaces which are open do not count with all the appropriate elements and with fully prepared professionals. However, during these last years and thanks to the creation of ISNA Espanya, more specialised courses are being offered, and the centres and the professionals are starting to be properly trained and offer the best services they can.

In this workshop we want to share with you an overview on how in a medium-sized organisation like ours, the Snoezelen Outlook has helped change out institutional culture. We will analyse this from three different points of view:

 

 

1. SNOEZELEN AND THE PEOPLE WE LOOK AFTER.

 

The images will show you how the people we deal with in the different units of APASA, from children to the elder, from people with light disabilities to severe ones, have benefitted from an snoezelen intervention. One can clearly perceive that this intervention has improved the quality of life of the treated person. The snoezelen outlook has made us possible to notice abilities of these people that possibly, with a different outlook, would have been unnoticed; it has helped us discover new paths, new ways of working day after day. To be a bit more precise, the snoezelen space makes the development of cognitive abilities, like attention or the ability to focus on something, easier; and at the same time it lets us offer an environment that makes communication with the treated person much easier. It has to be pointed out that in this sense, we always remark that inside the snoezelen room we can provoke responses, we can make easier for the person we are treating to externalise her emotional state, her preferences, her desires... and we as professionals have to be able to understand these expressions. As I mentioned earlier, our experience shows us that this intervention is valid for people of all ages and affectation profiles.

 

2. SNOEZELEN IN DIFFERENT SPACES.

 

We want to remark that the Snoezelen Philosophy in APASA, and that’s how we want to transmit it in every training course we offer, is not only applied inside the snoezelen room. Little by little we have been adapting different spaces of our center using the snoezelen point of view. We have been acquiring and producing different materials that make this kind of work easier. In this way, not only we work using this philosophy inside the snoezelen room, but also we apply it to different spaces and with different purposes. And we are very happy with the results we have been obtaining.

 

3. SNOEZELEN AND THE HUMAN TEAM IN APASA.

 

 It is very evident in our organization that the philosophy of snoezelen intervention during these last years has implied a significant change in the perception of job position of the professionals. It has implied a change in the level of laboral satisfaction of the team. We think that “a change of outlook” has occurred, that is, that the person understands her job in a different way, going from an attendance-wise point of view to perceiving themselves as professionals that offer quality of life. We want to remark that this change of mentality has been more evident in the Residence where we treat adults with severe disability, and where there’s a great amount of work for ——— —. In this cases we have made a huge improvement, we have been able to evolve and implement the snoezelen vision 24h. We have switched to a different way of offering attention to the people we look after, with much more quality (for instance, one does not simply change a diaper or give a shower, but instead while one does that, one gives a massage with hydrant gel thus offering tactile stimulation; or we give other sensorial inputs depending on the person we are working with). All this, and after all this time, is making us count with a human team with higher empowerment, with higher valuation and self-esteem. Moreover, the personnel is getting more interested in doing courses, reading articles, sharing experiences... and this is greatly enriching the team! We want to also remark the great inactive coming from the auxiliary-nurses team. They usually propose several activities that could be done from a snoezelen point of view, materials we could use... sometimes it’s a bit tricky to deal correctly with such quantity of suggestions!

 

4. CHANGE OF POINT OF VIEW OF THE FAMILIES.

 

We can clearly say that the families of the people we treat, specially these families with older people that tend to have the idea that their son, brother, etc. is someone who can almost do nothing, who is deeply affected has progressively changed thanks to the snoezelen culture, making possible for the families to see a person with ID from a better point of view. We have organized several open-door activities, where the families have work together with the APASA personnel using the snoezelen vision with their daughter or sister. This has implied that the families are now able to see a person with ID in a different way, making them able to accept very differently the situation and more importantly, making them more happy, more positive towards this “different” situation. At the same time, it has also meant higher confidence towards the organization, more relief in seeing that their familiar is being treated by professionals that work from a point of view that offers good life quality to the treated individual.

 

5. GREATER INTEGRATION INSIDE THE COMMUNITY.

 

 In the recording we will show you, you will be able to see that we have also evolved when it comes to celebrating events. For instance, the Christmas celebration is now being held in a different way from what we used to some years ago. We celebrate it in the biggest club of our county, where we are lent all the rooms of the building and where the auxiliary team works during several weeks to adapt the technology to this new space and thus make it possible to offer an evening of emotional wellbeing to the community using the snoezelen outlook. We make use of lights, colours, we adapt vestibulators (??) (with the help of the town’s firemen team, who make sure all the materials we use are safe), with specific materials. All this is done with lots of love! The result is that one afternoon we move, in the case of the service I run, all the residents (remember, adults with severe affectations), which means that a lot of people have to work voluntarily and with great pleasure outside of their working schedule. Moreover, we invite the families to come see the sessions and share the evening with us. These events are also held at the school and the occupational center. Thus, the snoezelen intervention for offering emotional wellbeing has been extended to environments which are external to the organisation itself, making possible that the persone with ID is perceived in a different way.

 

 

6. PROJECTION OF AP ASA ’S EXTERNAL IMAGE.

 

 It is important to remark that AP ASA is currently a pioneer in using snoezelen techniques inside the catalan territory, and also inside Spain. Since 2006, when we organised the First Multisensorial Stimulation and Snoezelen Congress, up to this year, where next month we are organising the V Snoezelen congress in Barcelona, we have been giving plenty of courses to different centres in Catalonia and Spain. A lot of professionals contact us for advice, courses and other topics related to snoezelen intervention. We want to remark also that since we come from a region where spanish is spoken, we are able to offer courses also in Central America, more specifically in Costa Rica, where we are offering a Capacitation course in a university in San José, and also in Portugal. Hence, we have the challenge and the responsibility, as professionals and as organisation, to keep on growing, keep on educating ourselves day after day so as to be able to spread the snoezelen concept in the most thoughtful way possible.

We hope that he video you will now see will transmit you what we were thinking of when we were editing it, which is no other than to show you how APASA has had the gift to meet, some years ago, the snoezelen intervention, and how this made us all change (users, workers, families and the organisation itself).

Enjoy the recording, and both Montse and I will be delighted to discuss all the questions you might have afterwards.

Thank you.

 

 Maria José Cid.

 mjcid@apasa.org