Fundraising for Eye Gaze for Hebden Green Community School

Currently at Hebden Green School, the NHS Speech and Language service have access to two school owned eye gaze devices. One of these is for fixating/tracking games only and one has Grid 3 communication software on. These machines are outdated and working inconsistently and are no longer fit for purpose for some children, but are by no means cheap to replace for school or the NHS.

We have access to a local hub for equipment for children, but we have to be able to demonstrate children meet their referral criteria, which is tricky on our current equipment.
We have at least 4 young children who would benefit from being able to practice more consistently and on a device which we can update/download things onto, which has the most up to date technology.

We had access to a child’s loan device for two weeks, which has the newest software and eye tracking technology, and in this time, we tried multiple children on the device.

Without access to eye gaze, these children we are working with can eye point to a few symbols which an adult holds up for them. These children have significant speech and motor challenges, which impacts their use of alternate access methods, such as switches. These children rely on adults guessing their wants and needs, and their communication is limited to the symbol sets available in the classroom at that time.

With eye gaze (and a good eye gaze device), these children have shown us during a 2 week loan period, that they can:
– independently access games like popping bubbles, making music, fart noises (an absolute winner for all our young people who tried this one)
-ask for bubbles. That they want more bubbles, to pop the bubbles, open the bubbles
-they can ask for a book, choose which book that is, whether the adult should keep reading, turn the page or that they want a different book
-ask to build a tower, add more bricks, knock it down.
-build a train track piece by piece, ask for more track, ask for trains, quickly, slowly, crash.
-ask for playdough, choose shapes , cutters, whether to roll or cut, ask for help
-greet their friends at circle time
-say how they are feeling from a range of basic emotions
-direct staff to which staff member they should throw balls at!
-ask for more food at lunch time, ask for pizza for their tea

This is just a snippet of the vocab, games and level of independence available to these children. If we could have a device that doesn’t stall or get stuck, that we can update, and put relevant games and vocab on, it would mean we can likely evidence much more than we can already in terms of what these children are capable of, what they are thinking and feeling and how they can express this. We would be able to put through more local referrals for children's own equipment and much faster, getting the best outcomes for these children and their families.

We have at least 4 other families we are working with who have felt they have had no choice but to privately purchase this equipment for their children. One can only imagine the financial impact and burden that must have on a family. Those children are now excellent eye gaze users and can communicate at a sentence level for a range of communication functions. It would make the world of difference to families to know that we can support more easily and with the right equipment to get their children their own equipment which they need later down the line.

I will be walking the Sandstone trail over two days, along with any willing colleagues, friends, family and pupils from school to raise the money we need to make this difference.