HENDERSONVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The Hendersonville Fire Department has added a new tool to its toolbox.

The department has placed "sensory kits," or backpacks with calming materials for people with autism or other disabilities, onto each of their fire engines.

The kits are a first for any first-responding agency in Hendersonville.

Behind it all is 24-year-old Jenna Kull, who decided to take her experiences and knowledge as a special education teacher, and pack it into one place.

“In special education, medical needs are pretty common,” Kull said. “In my particular classroom, I did have a few students with certain medical needs, and there have been multiple times where the firemen had to respond to my classroom.”

“People with disabilities, they act a different way,” Kull continued. “They aren’t able to express what hurts or what doesn’t feel good or what’s going on around them. It’s a very scary situation.”

The Hendersonville Fire Department began working on these backpacks with Kull about a year ago, following an emergency response from Station 4.

“They responded to a call that would have benefited if we had these resources," Hendersonville Firefighters Association Vice President Matt Elliott explained. “That’s when we got in touch with Jenna and created this relationship and realized that this was a need that we could hopefully fill.”

HFD now has eight of these backpacks at its disposal: one for each engine and one extra.

The backpacks include materials like noise-cancelling headphones, weighted blankets, sensory toys and communication boards, which allow those who are nonverbal to indicate what’s wrong and what they need.

“We have been trained on it,” Elliott said. “It is a little bit outside of what our normal service is. But having the opportunities for what’s involved and included in the backpack just gives us a plethora of choices to use.”

“I believe this could set a standard for what’s implemented with other emergency agencies in the area,” he added.

For Kull, this effort is a personal passion. She’s volunteered with special needs kids since she was in elementary school and later found her motivation in a high school peer-mentoring class. 

“I got very, very close with one of the students, and he had a lot of medical things going on with him,” Kull said. “He actually had a prognosis of not living through that school year, so I was able to do all these things for him to make his last year amazing. Just from that, I just wanted to serve those kids.”

Kull said she's already in talks with Hendersonville police to equip them with sensory kits. She hopes to eventually turn her project into a full blown nonprofit.

If you’d like to learn more or help her cause, visit Kull’s Facebook page, "The Calm and Connected Project."

News Source : https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/hendersonville-fire-department-adds-sensory-kits-to-every-engine/