Talk show host Jerry Springer may have a show that some parents don’t deem appropriate for children, but he has made a move to help some of Evanston’s youth in need.
Springer recently donated $233,000 to Evanston’s Park School, a vocational school for learning and physically disabled children at 848 Main St., to be used for the construction of a new sensory room at the school.
The donation is the result of conversations between school administrators and Springer, who is interested in developing positive interaction with disabled children, Park School Principal Sharon Clousing said.
“This is unexpected and very appreciated,” Clousing said. In her four years at Park, the school has not received a donation of this size, she said.
Springer is tied to the school through his daughter, who has volunteered there. Despite being born with some physical disabilities, she graduated college with a communications degree.
The donation will allow for the addition of a Snoezelen room, an area with low sensory input – specific lighting, music and scents – that helps students regulate themselves, Clousing said. The rooms help children who are agitated, Clousing said. The room allows them to calm down and regulate themselves.
Wheelchair-bound children also can benefit from the room, she said. After sitting in the same position for a long period of time, the child’s body can become tight. The room can be a place to provide physical therapy and help a child regulate their own body processes, she said. Other schools in the Chicago area have sensory rooms, but this would be the first Snoezelen room separate from a sensory room in the area, Clousing said.
Snoezelen rooms differ from other sensory rooms because their focus is to bring children from an aggressive state into a comfort zone, where they will be receptive to the room and allow themselves to regulate their own bodies, she said.
The Snoezelen room, first developed in the Netherlands during the 1970s, has undergone extensive research to assess the benefits. “I think this will be a wonderful opportunity of Evanston students,” Clousing said.
Reach Anna Prior at [email protected].
