Showcasing Changing Places

Published by Angela May for Total Hygiene in Communities

People with severe disabilities and their carers are being given increasing opportunity to enjoy life outside the home….

 Through the efforts of the Changing Places campaign, sponsored by leading disabled toileting solutions provider Total Hygiene, already over 300 Changing Places toilets have been installed across the UK, in venues as diverse as shopping centres, leisure attractions, colleges and even car parks: a 20% increase in just six months. 

 Campaign organisers and supporters will be using the leading disability show, Naidex, at the ExCel Centre in London, to further highlight the need for its toilets, and encourage operators of any building to which large numbers of the public have access to install one.

Explains Beverley Dawkins, co-chair of the Changing Places Consortium, “It is now accepted and expected that everyone has a right to live in the community, to move around within it and access all its facilities; without Changing Places toilets, not everyone can do this.

 “The speed at which Changing Places toilets have grown throughout the UK has been incredibly encouraging. It shows there is not just a need, but a demand for fully accessible toilets in public places. We hope that by featuring at Naidex South we can help communicate the importance of installing a Changing Places toilet and the impact it has on the quality of life for someone with profound and multiple learning disabilities.”

A Changing Places toilet is larger than a conventional accessible toilet, and includes a height adjustable adult-sized changing bench, a tracking hoist system or mobile hoist, a peninsular toilet with room either side for the carers, a screen or curtain to allow the disabled person and carer some privacy, wide tear off paper roll to cover the bench, a large waste bin for disposable pads, a non-slip floor and a washbasin.

 The concept is now recognised as ‘good practice’ for installation in any new build or major refurbishment of a building to which numbers of the public have access, under British Standards (BS8300:2009 design of buildings & their approaches to meet the needs of disabled people, and BS6454-4 Code of Practice for Provision of Public Toilets).