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Introduction
The English Department for Education specifies multisensory rooms as a necessary part of adequate provision for children and young people with learning disabilities (DFE, 2015, p. 51). Since their inception in the 1970s, multisensory rooms have proliferated, the populations of people exposed to the rooms have increased and broadened, and the equipment within the rooms has become increasingly elaborate.
Despite a history dating back 50 years and much anecdotal evidence to support the idea that multisensory rooms are a valuable resource, there exists no methodologically sound research upon which to base practice (Challis et al., 2017, Fava and Strauss, 2010). In an investigation into the design of multisensory rooms and the activities conducted within them, Challis (2014) questioned whether the rooms themselves were as useful as commonly assumed. Botts et al. (2008, p. 145) express concern that multisensory room practice emerged following a commercial supply and demand model, cautioning: “In the absence of proving product efficacy in the form of quality, replicable peer-reviewed research, American educators should not allocate public funds on unproven, though promising, interventions”. Mount and Cavet (1995, p. 53) remark that “the paucity of published research into the educational applications of multisensory rooms should be a cause for concern especially in view of the amount of resources they absorb.”
The intention of the current study was to begin to address the lack of research in this area by examining the experiences of practitioners currently using multisensory rooms. In particular, the study sought to identify characteristics of multisensory rooms that practitioners considered essential and barriers they encountered to effective practice. It was hoped that this would allow identification of how practitioners could better release the latent potential of such rooms.
History
Hulsegge and Verheul (1987), widely recognised as the starting point for multisensory room practice, were insistent that the rooms themselves were not the principal agents of change. They attributed the transformations witnessed within the rooms to an underpinning philosophy informing a respectful, relational manner of working – “most important are the interpersonal contacts. These can never be substituted by machines or effects” (p. 14). They described the multisensory room as “a place where that philosophy can be easily embodied” (p. 39) but noted “other situations such as personal care are...