A GROUND-BREAKING project pioneered in the North-East is opening doors for children with special needs - enabling many to communicate for the first time.

Dr Phil Ellis of Sunderland University's school of arts, design and media is working with children from Davenport School in Houghton-le-Spring with dramatic effect.

He is using sound therapy together with technology called Soundbeam, where even the smallest physical movement, with a hand, a foot or even an eyelash, can cause highly motivating sound to be produced.

The children can hear the sounds and also feel them as vibration, which create very powerful stimulation.

Dr Ellis said: "I have seen extraordinary results in Davenport. It is highly motivating for them and means we have been able to reach out to children in a way that has not been done before.

"If you can see over time the children communicate and show pleasure through their own awareness then we are doing something worthwhile."

He added: "Some of the children we have been working with have very limited movement and have never been able to control something before.

"The nature of the therapy means that all children can create sound and therefore they can be empowered and able to express themselves."

Dr Ellis has been developing the approach for more than nine years but since his arrival at Sunderland University it has become more finely tuned.

It is now much more focused and predictable and is having quite powerful results and more quickly than in the past.

Sound therapy has proved effective for children with epilepsy, cerebral palsy, visual and hearing impairments and can also be effective when used with children who are autistic.

Katy Atack, a teacher at Davenport School, said: "Sound therapy has opened up a creative world for our children where they have control. A control that in normal everyday life is so often denied to them.

"For some autistic children it is a key to unlock their prison and to enable them to experience communication."

Dr Ellis is piloting the approach with elderly patients who have suffered strokes, have depression or dementia - with dramatic effect.