Saving Flushing Money Down the Pan

Published by Angela May for Total Hygiene in Housing and also in Health

Total Hygiene’s innovative approach to recycling is enabling social housing and care providers to optimize budgets and deliver better outcomes for lower costs.

The company, the UK’s oldest-established and biggest provider of disabled toileting solutions, is responding to the Government’s 27% cut in real terms in social care funding with the development of a new refurbishment package for its Clos-o-Mat ‘wash and dry’ (automatic) toilet, of which over 40,000 are installed throughout the nation.

A Clos-o-Mat looks like a conventional WC but has integral douche and drier, ensuring the user is properly cleansed after toileting without the need to clean- or be cleaned by a carer- manually with toilet tissue. Under its recycling scheme, Total Hygiene will remove a Clos-o-Mat from a home where it is no longer needed, fully refurbish it at its UK factory, then install the unit at a new location, complete with 12month warranty.

Explains Robin Tuffley, Total Hygiene marketing manager, “A Clos-o-Mat enables a disabled or elderly person to toilet with little- or no- help from a carer, in itself freeing up the time and cost of providing such care support. It is inevitable that over time a person’s needs change, and/or they are no longer in the home, meaning a useful piece of equipment is being under-utilised, while there may be someone else in the community who could really benefit from it.

“Our recycling scheme enables social housing and care providers to avoid ‘flushing money down the pan’. The ‘Better Outcomes Lower Costs’ report maintains ‘for the same money as having a carer come in every day to lift a disabled person on and off a commode, that person could have an automatic toilet which they can use whenever they please, and which gives them more autonomy and dignity’. If the capital cost is significantly reduced by using a refurbished Clos-o-Mat, then even better outcomes are being delivered, for even lower costs.”

The Clos-o-Mat is the only unit of its kind developed specifically for disabled people, made in the UK and with WRAS approval enabling legal connection to the mains water supply. Total Hygiene (www.clos-o-mat.com) has 50 years’ expertise in developing, supplying and maintaining toileting aids; The company’s extensive range of options, from support arms to varying douche options can be easily fitted as part of the refurbishment process, to enable tailoring of the toilet to each individual’s needs.