Three sites,one vision for children

ErinoakKids Centre for Treatment and Development is Ontario in Canada’s largest Children’s Treatment Centre (CTC), serving over 15,000 children with disabilities and their families each year. Its clients have a wide range of physical and/or developmental disabilities, communication disorders, and autism, and some of the children the Centre looks after are blind and/or deaf. With around 650 staff, the main services offered by the CTC include Autism Services, Communication Services, Infant Hearing Screening, Medical Services, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, and Vision Services.

When the Centre decided to consolidate its 10 sites into three, it turned to Stantec and the wider design team to design purpose-built spaces for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

At Stantec we are continually educating ourselves about how these children perceive and respond to their physical environment. However, limited information and research exist on designing for children with ASD. With this fairly small body of evidence-based research, designing these spaces can be challenging. Our design team thus dared to think differently. We respected existing research and evidence-based design, while also embarking on some innovative thinking. With the help of the client, EOK, we challenged theories about design for children with ASD. The result? We designed three facilities that will not only help children with various challenges, but will also contribute to the body of research and evidence-based design for children with ASD.