Total Approach to 'Extra Care'

The ability for housing providers to cost-effectively create homes that can be equipped to adapt with residents’ changing requirements into supported and extra care housing is being simplified with a new concept from Total Hygiene.

A key essential service for extra care housing is on-site provision or access to 24 hour personal and practical care services, with provision of personal care being flexible and tailored to individual needs enabling people to remain in the same place. One of the main issues affecting residents as they age is that of mobility, and the reliance on carers to undertake even basic personal hygiene such as going to the toilet- something we all do, on average 7 times a day! Further, the new BS8300:2009 specifies that there should be at least one accessible bedroom- including en-suite sanitary facilities- in multi-occupancy building, including residential homes.

Total Hygiene has thus developed its innovative Complete Bathroom Collection, which enables specifiers to single-source the design, specification, installation and commissioning of an adaptable bathroom. The range encompasses grab rails through toilet lifters and hoists to height adjustable baths and Clos-o-Mat automatic ‘wash and dry’ toilets, so enabling the user to bathe or toilet with optimum dignity, independence and hygiene, minimising the reliance on or requirement of a carer.

Under the Collection, Total Hygiene will advise on and help design the bathroom, and can execute the whole process as required from supply to commissioning using its own in-house specialist engineers.

Geoff Richardson, Total Hygiene Sales Director, explains, “It is a basic human right to be able to toilet with dignity, independence and privacy, and our research shows it has a massive positive psychological impact on a person’s feeling of wellbeing to so do without relying on a carer to help. With the drive to help people remain independent as much as possible, a little thought in the design and specification process can help achieve this, simultaneously reducing the demands on care staff and creating a living environment that can accommodate a person’s changing needs without major adaptation. Developers would use a specialist M&E contractor for the building services, so it is logical to use a specialist in disabled hygiene to handle the toileting and bathing elements of specialist housing.”

Total Hygiene, manufacturer of the UK’s top-selling wash and dry toilet- the Clos-o-Mat, has over 40 years’ experience in creating toileting solutions for less able. Today there are over 30,000 Clos-o-Mats installed throughout the UK in locations as diverse as individual’s homed to hospitals, care homes, shopping centres, hotels and even a narrowboat and tall ship!