Earlier this year Spread a Smile received a very generous donation from The Toy Trust to enable our work providing specialised play sessions and activities for children with a disability or sensory impairment.
This has enabled us to develop a new and exciting area of work, creating and supplying special sensory boxes for children on Paediatric Intensive Care Units in the hospitals we support.
Our sensory boxes aim to provide relief and comfort for children in intensive care at one of the most difficult times of their lives and when their sensory engagement with the world around them has been severely reduced. The boxes contain all sorts of soothing and engaging toys including projection lamps, musical shakers and frog massagers. We are also grateful for a generous donation from Tonies of their Tonieboxes – amazing screen-free audio systems which play stories and music.
All of the toys are designed to help with sensory stimulation and gentle play. Importantly, they serve to distract the child and block out the sounds of the medical machines that surround them.
Over the coming weeks, we will be delivering 12 sensory boxes into six Paediatric Intensive Care Units, with three already having been delivered already to the team at Great Ormond Street Hospital.
Thank you to The Toy Trust for their amazing support and making these sensory boxes a reality.