Solution to Achieving Best Value in Budget Constraints

Published by Angela May for Clos-o-Mat in Housing

Housing and care providers are being offered a practical and cost-effective solution to ensuring client care can continue to be delivered despite budget cutbacks, through a practical approach from Total Hygiene.

 The company, Britain’s leading supplier of disabled toileting solutions, has a unique service and maintenance package for local authorities and housing associations.  For less than 50p/day, people who need the help of a carer to go to the toilet can be assured that Total Hygiene’s equipment will be regularly servicing to optimize its continued efficiency and functioning, and, in the rare event there is a problem, the company will send one of its team if in-house, dedicated service engineers within 48 hours of notification to resolve the issue.

 “To cut service contracts for specialized equipment is a false economy” says Ian Tomlinson, Total Hygiene commercial manager. , “ On average we visit the toilet eight times a day! It is vital to someone’s personal hygiene, let alone their feeling of independence and self-worth, that disabled or elderly people are not denied access to a toilet for any longer than necessary. If the equipment stops working, the option is to send in a community carer to help them toilet- that cost of that visit is significantly greater than 50p/day! We all know from practical, first-hand experience that best value is achieved, and it is more cost-effective in the long-run, to regularly service equipment, to ensure it functions at its optimum, reliably.”

 Multiple Sclerosis sufferer Kevin Pointing had one of Total Hygiene’s Clos-o-Mat wash and dry toilets installed at his West Sussex home under a Disabled Facilities Grant,, and has the benefit of a service & maintenance contract.

 “I just couldn’t be without it, it’s a brilliant piece of kit,” he says. “You try your hardest to carry on regardless but my illness means I can’t use my right arm at all and can’t stand up, so need help with almost everything. Would you want your wife or husband to be wiping your bottom every time you needed to go to the loo? Our quality of life has gone through the roof! The Clos-o-Mat has helped enormously, physically and mentally. We have a lot of friends who visit, and they all love it too, and almost make excuses to go to the toilet when they’re here!”

 Total Hygiene is the only manufacturer of specialist ‘wash and dry’ toilets to offer a full service & maintenance package, using its own team of engineers. Since launch in the UK 50 years ago, over 40,000 of the company’s Clos-o-Mat ‘wash and dry’ toilet have been installed. The Clos-o-Mat’s combination of a douche and drier with a WC, enables elderly and disabled people to toilet with little or no assistance, as it removes the need for manual cleansing by themselves or a carer. The Clos-o-Mat itself is unique, being the only unit of its type developed specifically for disabled people, and was the first to attain WRAS approval for legal connection to the mains water supply.