Lifelites at Haven House
Over 500 children attending Haven House and Little Havens have had access to assistive and inclusive technologies. Lifelites is happy to say we were able to give them ALL the items they asked for, for their children. Here are a few of the comments from the palliative care staff from their application for their last package.
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The Haven House Teenage Cancer Group was formed in 2016 after one girl in remission from Leukaemia suggested it would be nice to meet others with a cancer diagnosis in a less formal setting. They meet once a month at the hospice having fun and making friends – just socialising together doing things other teenagers do – such as playing computer games and Virtual Reality” Lifelites’ tech can be a focal point for socialisation of young people - just something other children and young people take part in.
The group recently wrote, recorded and released their own song, with support form one of our music therapists – highlighting their experiences of living with cancer. The group would love the opportunity to continue their musical adventure and would be absolutely delighted if they had access to the Lifelites music bundle, including Beamz software and Soundbeam 6” Lifelites has recently added a brand new musical device to their called the Digit Music Cmpsr (composer) and all projects that request it should be getting it this year. It’s an amazing device enabling anyone to play real, recognisable music of many genres with just a few small movements on a joystick.
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Haven House believes that Lifelites technologies could help make vital sessions like physiotherapy more fun and engaging. Physiotherapy is offered as part of our Hospice at Home service. Lifelites provides a range of portable technologies in our Tech Trunk for the outreach workers to take out to the community. Young people with Juvenile Huntingtons and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy can suffer from social isolation. Young people with these conditions, whilst possessing normal cognitive abilities, often experience limited communications and co-ordination skills and can become very introverted as a result. However with the Eyegaze and the Tech Box we can help them to engage with individual challenges and enjoy taking part with family and friends.”
Lifelites helps [the children with a learning disability] by enabling children to communicate with staff and families to demonstrate what they enjoy and guide their own fun and learning.. Many of the children require help with controlling equipment but with the wonderful Lifelites technologies many of them can develop their own skills and experience feelings of independence – this also helps staff to understand how individual children wish to play. The technology plays a huge part in providing stimulation to children with sensory impairments. It helps children in making decisions and creating and exploring their interests.. Many of the children will discover new things by trial and error, what they can and can’t do, what they do and don’t like. Lifelites gives the opportunity to do this and in addition facilitates learning within a social group, enabling interaction with other children where they otherwise may not be able to.
Switches, beams and iPads are used on a daily basis for children with visual impairments as they can produce loud noises. It’s vitally important for children to receive a response to their actions.
We feel that the Go-Pro and VR package would be very beneficial for this group of young people [transition to adult services]. VR will enable them to experience activities they may never otherwise have the opportunity to experience.
When carrying out “at home” visits the team most commonly used the Beamz and the Eyegaze as well as the iPads. The Tech Trunk would help our team more easily take this equipment out to the community and give our families a wider more engaging care experience”
Lifelites technology has provided our children with the chance to communicate and interact using their eyes with Eyegaze. In one case we asked the child to find specific animals using Eyegaze and to our amazement she was able to do so. This child had previously shown that she was able to understand us and it was wonderful to tell her parents. Kids can also paint pictures with their eyes creating lovely keep sakes.