Robust furniture for an Autism-friendly bedroom
Like so many parents caring for challenging autistic children at home, Kate found that her son’s bedroom presented some real practical problems. He loved to bounce on his bed but no bed from any of the shops would last longer than a month, so he ended up on a mattress on the floor. Likewise, conventional storage furniture didn’t survive very long either. The risks from broken furniture and the difficulty of endlessly having to replace it became so much that his toys and books lived on the floor, making the room very hard to keep clean and tidy, and his clothes had to be stored elsewhere. While Archie would happily sit the longest hour gazing out of the window, for Kate there was the constant worry of him falling through, quite apart from his penchant for posting the duvet out!
Tough Furniture’s robust autism-friendly furniture provided the solution to Kate’s problem. Our first job, as always, was to do what it says on the packet and cope cheerfully with the hard wear and tear. The storage bed and wardrobe /cupboard/drawer unit fitted are still going strong, with all his clothes and possessions now safe in fully lockable storage, together with an iPod player so now there can be music in a tidier room. More than this, Kate’s also found that as she can now get out different toys and books every night in rotation they are always fresh for her son and he’s taking a far greater interest, especially in the books.
This left the window to make safe, which Tough Furniture did through their custom design and manufacture service which can be so responsive to such individual needs. Adapting the concept behind their unique range of protective TV cabinets, they made an internal hardwood window frame with a panel of polycarbonate window protection. It protects the blind and outside glass and is lockable and pierced for ventilation too. Like Tough Furniture itself, the lockable window protection has been designed to blend into a homely environment at the same time as solving practical problems.
The end result was an autism-friendly bedroom.
Summing up the success of her son’s new bedroom Kate says :
“Best of all, he doesn’t cry in his room any more. He’s happier there now because it’s become a nicer place to be.”
Postscript: Following the success of this first window protection unit in delivering safety and security the concept has developed into one of our keynote products and is widely used in a variety of care environments, especially mental health and learning difficulties. For more information put ‘Window Protection’ in the Search box above.
