Ms Patricia Cusack:

I am the librarian at Watch House Cross community library in Limerick city. I will begin with some statements from our national policy which underpin all the work we undertake in our library. The policy refers to a focus on improving access, use and visibility of the public library and establishing it as a go-to place for a range of sustainable, integrated public services. This fits in with the goals from our city and council corporate plan also.

Watch House Cross community library, which is located in Moyross, has been at the heart of the community since it opened in 2006 and we continually strive to meet the changing needs of the community we serve. We also serve parts of the county which border with Clare.

Where did our journey begin on the way to being an autism-friendly library service? In 2018 we had requests from St. Michael's Infant School autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit; the primary school in Sexton Street. It wanted to come to visit for story time and craft. At the time we were also working with the Hope Montessori, which was located in Kileely. What did we learn from these early visits? We learned that autistic children are visual learners. One of our big learnings was that we, as a staff, did not have the skill set or training needed to be able to work with these groups. My colleague, Pam Byrne, set about finding out where we would get the education and training required to help us with this programme. She identified a postgraduate certificate in autism studies in Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, she applied for this programme and it was part-funded by the council. This helped us to begin our programme. One of the first things she did was write the social story for the library service. This social story is handed out to parents, teachers, carers and families and it can be used, before they come to visit the library, to see what they might experience in the library when they visit.

It was at this point that we first thought about maybe having a sensory room in the library, as we were in the fortunate position of having a room that could be repurposed. We went to visit the sensory library in Shannon Airport and the staff there offered us a lot of valuable advice. Members will see from the presentation that our sensory room has a range of tactile, visual, auditory and vestibular stimuli. The presentation shows photographs that give members an idea of what the space looks like with the bubble tube, which has a calming effect, and then we have infinity tunnels. Members will see the image of the timer on the wall and the different lighting. Members will also see the alphabet we have, which has a different tactile feel for each of the letters and we have a dark space, which is popular with a lot of the children. In the early days we did not realise how many of our users would be adults and Adam & Friends, which is now called Senco Sensory Solutions kindly created these couch for us and gave it to us so that our adults could also manage to use the space.

Since we opened in September 2019, we have had approximately 170 bookings in the early months and 50% of our users are adults from Avista, the Brothers of Charity and care in the community groups. Our users from all parts of Limerick city and county and they also come from Tipperary and Clare, including from Roscrea, Scariff, Doonbeg and Kilrush. Our local schools have weekly bookings in the rooms and the sessions last for 30 minutes. We have a policy which allows the child, teen or adult with sensory needs to use the room.

We were fortunate to get funding from Limerick regeneration through its social intervention fund. We also got funding from the Dormant Accounts Fund and from our library budgets. This funding allowed the design and installation of the sensory at Watch House Cross. It allowed us to create a visual schedule and improve our signage. It also allowed us to run a programme of relaxed performances, to have staff training and to produce a booklet which is the social story which tells you about autism and visiting the library. This booklet is also available as a PDF on www.limerick.ie.

The current slide on the presentation shows some of our branding and signage, which is part of the visual schedule and our book stock, which is targeted towards parents, carers and children and teens on the spectrum. This next slide shows a training day. Our training was done on-site by Fiona Ferris from AsIAm. About 40 to 50 of our staff trained on that date. Staff have also availed of online public service training from AsIAm and they have availed of training through the youth libraries group. The slide on display now shows an example of our relaxed events, which are specifically designed to welcome people with sensory needs. These relaxed performances were held in several of our branches throughout the city and county, including in Kilmallock, Rathkeale, Newcastle West and Abbeyfeale.

In 2019 we were fortunate to be given an award for our work on this project and then Covid came. Post Covid, following the easing of restrictions we had a soft reopening in summer 2021. Our usage numbers have come back up and in March, we had 185 users. This shows the great need in the community for spaces like this. Our further developments include a pod in the library in Abbeyfeale and a sensory space in Newcastle West library. All of our branches have a collection of sensory toys available for use. We plan to continue to develop our autism-friendly library services, to continue to work with autism advocacy agencies, to encourage and support all our staff to engage with training and education to ensure that we can develop our autism-friendly library service and to continue to innovate to ensure all our libraries will be places of welcome for all our citizens.