As the topic of mental health continues to gain steam here in North America, schools across Canada and the United States are turning to safe rooms to help children deal with every day stress. While in some isolated cases, these rooms have come under fire because of blatant misuse by staff, the research suggests that when used properly, they are proven to calm students down in a safe and controlled manner.
While also used in a variety of other industries, schools in particular have taken notice of the advantages and importance of creating and constructing these types of spaces for their students.
As such, we were once again contacted by a prominent Ontario school board to design and install inclusive padding for students in a number of schools across the region. These rooms are often repurposed from unused spaces such as old staff rooms or larger storage areas. The reality of designing these rooms is that in most cases, they are not cookie cutter in nature and require a fair bit of design finesse to get them completed.
After being contacted by the board, we brought in our partners at King Carpentry in Belleville to assist us in ensuring detailed measurements and to provide the school board with a clear and concise communication conduit directly linked to our design team. Having worked on similar padding projects in the past, Greg King was immediately on-site to assess the nuances of each space across a variety of schools.
In addition to awkward spaces, many of these rooms included challenges such as radiators, and windows and walls that were unfortunately not square in measurement. With photographic details and meticulous measurements from Greg’s team, our design team was up to the task and quickly got to work on the padding solution for each individual room.
Once the design process was complete, the padding was shipped to each school and met by Greg and his team where they calmly but swiftly got the padding installed as necessary. With a keen eye and attention to detail, their team removed all doors to place the padding in the best possible way and then the doors were safely re-installed to ensure a seamless fit.
Overall, another wonderful project in the books once again, with our partners at King Carpentry.