Westfield London understands that guests with additional sensory needs may find visiting our centre a daunting experience. To help support guest’s visits, we offer sensory packs that have been selected with key sensory items to offer children and adults a broad range of sensory opportunities and therapeutic benefits.And they are bright red, and labelled, so everyobe can see you are a special person, not just one of the hoi polloi.
The pack has been designed to support people living with a wide range of disabilities who are likely to benefit from sensory resources to make their shopping experience more enjoyable.
I work in Stratford and have to go through Westfield - what would make it more enjoyable for me is a free stab-vest or a compete ban on diversity. It would certainly make it safer.
But this is not what the people who are the target of this advert want, they want the cachet of being different, special and singled out for special treatment and attention.
Our sensory packs contain items such as ear defenders and sunglasses to help with noise and light sensitivity, fiddle toys to keep hands busy and relieve stress and feeling fans to express how you are feeling.
I thought about Googling ‘feeling fans’ to find out what they are but thought better of it. I cannot be doing with any more coddling of pathetic kids and adults for whom the best advice would be ‘GROW UP!’
Our sensory packs can be hired at Guest Services.
Pity you can't hire a backbone. That's what would do these people the most good.
??? What next ??? DAD
ReplyDeleteHaving raised a child with high-functioning ASD and hyper-acute hearing, I cannot imagine anything which would ever render a shopping trip ‘enjoyable’ for him, at least in the surroundings of a large urban mall. (These days, if he needs to go shopping, he avoids busy times and takes his own unobtrusive noise-cancelling earbuds.)
ReplyDeleteFor those with more complex needs severe enough to need the aids described, Westgate is surely a Purgatorial experience which no provision of ‘fiddle toys’ and ‘feeling fans’ could significantly mitigate; there’s something horribly cynical about using the lure of special treatment to encourage their families to indulge in conscience-free recreational shopping rather than choosing a more suitable leisure activity.
I’d be more worried about them being mugged!
DeleteI’d be more worried about muggings!
DeleteFeelings fan: https://www.sensorydirect.com/feelings-fan (SFW)
ReplyDeleteOh, FFS!
DeleteOh, give me strength….
DeleteWith some experience in the field, I’m not convinced; reading facial expressions and defining feelings is difficult for those with severe ASD so practice is necessary to enable them to use aids like this; as with the ear defenders, anyone accustomed to using one will already have their own and, in the case of the fans, if not, simply hiring one from Customer Services is hardly likely to help.
DeleteIncluding them in the pack looks like either the work of a well-meaning but uninformed committee of some kind or window-dressing of the most cynical kind.
Sorry - that last one was me.
DeleteSteve
ReplyDeleteIt's a mystery how, as a society we got through the Second World War, that then evolves into something that couldn't win a war against Luxembourg.
If there is a Third WorldWar , we should surrender now, to save time.
Delete