Progress Report

Progress Report sent to UBC Learning Exchange, July 25 2011

UBC Learning Exchange Trek Program
Interim Progress Report
Project: Multi-Sensory Stimulatory Environments to Improve Senior Health
Students: Willie Kwok, Mabel Ma, Yi ru Soh
Community Partner: SUCCESS Multilevel Care Society

Overview:

• Project is moving along smoothly, we have almost completed one sensory corner (the traditional chinese garden, although we are still waiting on some material to arrive) and currently working on the second
• Currently waiting for a shipment of sensory equipment (special lamps, tactile toys, etc.) from spectrum (senior equipment supplier) which will arrive in apx. 3-4 weeks.
• Fiona (recreation therapist and our primary staff we are working with) is going on vacation for the next 3 weeks (wedding), we will be primarily working with mimi chan (the care coordinator) in her place.

Some quick images we took a week or so back to show our work progress:
Before:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/eMRIYNhSdS0teK6EN05dBtMH6PmDQbrSjLe7P04mHNk?feat=directlink

After:

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/d4MA3AHt7uzNs2x0q6XPgdMH6PmDQbrSjLe7P04mHNk?feat=directlink
P.S. The toy bird chirps to clapping and there is chinese music playing in the background.

-Again it isn’t quite complete, we are still trying tofind for appropriate chair covers, and curtains/wallpaper to cover up the wall in the background.

Challenges:

• Working with the health teams and family members for culturally appropriate material (particularly for our traditional Chinese theme there are certain culturally sensitive materials we had to take into account such as colors and paintings.)
• Having to deal with a slight delay of approval before we can go ahead with any significant tasks (i.e. just hanging something on the wall would require approval by the recreation department and confirmation by the health care staff , administration and engineering.)
• Finding materials in the community have taken a significant portion of the time (Finding the right paintings/ decorations in a store, reporting back to the community partner for approval, going back to purchase, etc.)
• Health care staff/ Administration have been quite cooperative in providing plenty of input for the project. We’re still lagging behind on getting more input from the residents and their family members, which will be one of our primary issues we are working to rectify.
• Scheduling has posed some organizational challenges (vacations, school, work, etc.), sometimes it is difficult to coordinate everyone’s schedules despite having regular online conference meetings/shared calendar planners/blogs to help

TODO:

• Continue work on the corners, current deadlines are: Aquatic/fishing corner by mid August, Tropical/Forest corner by Late August, and the Funhouse/colour corner by mid September
• Getting the community more involved, our meetings/ discussions have been restricted mostly to staff initially. Need to have more active promotion and interaction with other volunteers, community members, and residents.
• Look into possible alternatives to projectors offered by the traditional senior equipment providers (prohibitively expensive at around $2000-$3000). Possible alternatives might just be to buy a relatively cheap laptop and portable projector (~$800 possibly)

Budget:

• SUCCESS initially fronted us $2500 to use on purchases for the corners, we have spent just around ~1500 or so on the first corner.
• Additional purchase of bulk of sensory material from spectrum totaling $1368.42

Total used currently: ~ $2900 of $5000

Miscellaneous/Comments:

• Created a blog to keep track of progress at https://blogs.ubc.ca/sensoryforseniors/ (albeit we have been slow to update recently)
• We haven’t quite narrowed down the exact date for the site visit, it will definitely be the week of or after the open house though (August 18).