Kits full of comfort: Sensory Bags For Kids sees high demand

Jan. 14—RACINE — Faith Hope and Love, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting children in crisis, received a $7,500 grant from SC Johnson last December to fund their new program, Sensory Bags for Kids.

The program delivers sensory bags — which are designed to give kids with autism or high levels of trauma comfort during emergencies or stressful situations — to law enforcement officers, first responders, hospitals, schools, social workers and foster care departments. Faith Hope & Love's goal is to have one bag in every emergency vehicle in Wisconsin.

Each drawstring bag, which includes items like fidget toys, a weighted blanket, stress balls, a noise-cancelling headset and safety lollipops, costs about $55 to make.

Heather Lojeski, executive director of Faith Hope & Love, set out to deliver 400 bags in the new year. But she said the need for them has increased to about 800 requests to deliver.

"I've definitely had my eyes open to the fact that the need is a bigger population than what I anticipated," Lojeski said.

The first delivery of sensory bags was last October, to the Kenosha County Sheriff's Department and funded by Educators Credit Union. So far, other deliveries have been made to Children's Hospital Child Advocacy Care Center in Racine and Kenosha, and Kenosha County Foster Care.

Since then, Lojeski said there have been case workers who reach out every week asking for more bags. She and her team are set to make another delivery late January.

Ben Lake, Children's Community Options Program case manager at Kenosha Human Development Services, said about 110 bags were given to him and other managers.

He said sensory bags help case managers specifically because when they visit families, the items in the bag are used to evaluate children's needs.

"(Case managers) have a basic foundation to work from with these items," Lake said.

Lojeski first heard about the idea of sensory bags in 2018 from Monte Osterman, former Racine County Board candidate. Osterman's daughter is a social worker and wished there was a program offering the bags in Wisconsin. Osterman turned to Lojeski, she said, because she often puts bags together. Faith Hope & Love has given out

duffel bags with personal care items

for kids who are quickly pulled out of their situation and sent into foster homes, and

BlastPacks

, which are full of activities for kids to do with law enforcement officers while they wait to visit their incarcerated parents.

Lojeski said helping children on the autism spectrum is not something that she had done before, but after some research, she was surprised at the demand for a service like sensory bags.

"We felt that it really applied to our mission to build faith, hope and love in the lives of children in crisis," Lojeski said. "We thought, here's another tool that can be utilized to do that."

A spokesperson from SC Johnson said supporting Faith Hope & Love was a responsibility owed to the community.

"This is a program that has the potential for positive outcomes and easing the burden on everybody involved," the spokesperson said. "If we have the opportunity to step in and help in those situations, we wanna make sure we're there to help."

Details on how to donate items and sponsor bags to Faith Hope & Love can be found on their website.

___

(c)2021 The Journal Times, Racine, Wisc.

Visit The Journal Times, Racine, Wisc. at www.journaltimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.