By BARBARA ANDREA FRANCO BORGES | Director
The Heliopolis Elderly Center has found that aging is associated with a progressive decline of mental and physical abilities. Considering the current changes in our society due to the covid crisis, we have found an urgent need to permit an independent lifestyle into old age. So we decided to build a sensory project to support the development of sensory integration informed care pathways.
Therefore, helping our older adults with physical and sensory exercise is critical by mediating and maintaining physical and mental fitness by offering sensory classes at our Day Center. In addition to physical activity, feeling through all of our senses combines emotions, social interaction, sensory stimulation, motor coordination, and fun, thereby creating enriched environmental conditions for older persons.
Here we demonstrate the impact of maintaining tactile discrimination skills – adequate tactile perception is necessary for using tools in a skillful way for participation in lifelong hobbies like sewing, model making, cake icing, knitting, dancing, and painting.
We found that maintaining a regular schedule of sensory lessons into old age can preserve cognitive, motor, and perceptual abilities and prevent them from degradation. Our sensory project found that the far-reaching beneficial effects of this program helped our seniors improve their sensory ability to facilitate balance and posture, a prime candidate for the preservation of everyday life competence of elderly individuals.
Thank you to all our donors for making this sensory project possible.
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