TOPEKA, Kan. -Anonymous donors have given the Kansas Children’s Discovery Center the funds to be able to begin several summer programs.
Some of these projects will include providing crisis sensory kits to help children transition from home to foster care.
“Any time we experience a stressful experience those emotions are really big and so these sensory kits with feedback of KVC will allow kids to express those emotions with their muscles so inside there is a variety of fidget toys and puddie that is kind of like a slim but it is very hard to pull apart so you can use those big muscles to get out some of those big emotions,” says ____
KVC President, Linda Bass, says this is more than children playing, it’s helping them grow.
“For children especially younger children the way that they grow and learn about where they are about to safely engage with the world around them and communicate through play,” Bass said.
Bass says in Shawnee County there is a bigger foster population than people may think–
“Here in Shawnee County we have more than 600 children who are living in foster care and about half of those children are placed with a family member or someone they know and the other half is placed with foster families who open up their doors to take care of these children,” she said.
When the center closed down due to the pandemic—stress levels may have risen in not only children but in families as a whole.
“This is a time where we know play is critical and it’s critical to healing for all families as we merge out of this window of time and play is essential and it is healing and it gives a special opportunity for these families to do it in this way,”.
