Rosa Morison recently had two reasons to celebrate when they were awarded funding for top-of-the-range Eye Gaze equipment, and also raised over £500 with the help of Claridge’s Hotel, London.

The Friends of Rosa Morison Day Centre were granted funding to dramatically improve the quality of life for their service users when a member of staff at Barnet Homes was successful in a bid for funding for Smartbox’s Eye Gaze kit, worth over £7000.

The Eye Gaze kit, from assistive technology specialists Smartbox, allows users to access a computer and take part in activities that have been specially created to provide a fun way to improve access and choice making skills. Each activity develops a different skill, ranging from early cause and effect through to accurate eye gaze control.

“It’s really great to see how the clients are engaging with the screen and enjoying it – they’ve got huge smiles on their faces from being able to activate the videos” said Becky Beedles, Speech & Language Therapist, Barnet Learning Disability Service.

“Many of the clients don’t have a lot of functional communication skills and control over their environment so it’s about giving them the choice and independence to activate it themselves.”

Richard Buckman, Rosa Morison Manager, said: “Receiving funding for this has been fantastic for us, I am over the moon for clients. It creates so much more opportunity for them as it enables users to communicate with us when they can’t physically. Before, if users didn’t have the physical ability press to something on screen, now they can use their eyes. The three clients who’ve already tried it out have clearly benefited from it.”

Sam Carter, Assistant Support Worker at Rosa Morison, was also rewarded when she won a dinner-for-four meal voucher for London’s prestigious Claridge’s Hotel.

Claridge’s Hotel donated the meal vouchers to the Friends of Rosa Morison Day Centre after being impressed by the charitable work they do. A raffle was organised by staff from Your Choice Barnet and Barnet Homes, with all proceeds going to the charity.

This proved to be a much-desired prize amongst staff as over £500 was raised for the charity – with some staff members buying multiple tickets!