A Life-Changing Room
Thousands of people in the UK alone with profound and multiple learning disabilities, as well other disabilities that severely limit mobility, cannot use standard accessible toilets.
Dangerous, Unhygienic and Undignified
Standard accessible toilets or “disabled toilets” do not provide changing benches or hoists and most are too small to accommodate more than one person such as family or a carer. Without Changing Places toilets, the person with disabilities is put at risk, and carers are forced to risk their own health and safety by changing their loved one on a toilet floor or other unsuitable and dangerous places.
Disabled People’s Rights
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. Government policy promotes the idea of “community participation” and “active citizenship,” but for some people with disabilities the lack of a fully accessible toilet is denying them this right.
Changing Places Toilets: We Need More
By providing these specialist toilets in public places it would (and already does) make a dramatic difference to the lives of thousands of people who desperately need these facilities including both users and carers; demonstrating the importance of Changing Places. Although the campaign is growing dramatically in awareness, campaigners and installations there are still not enough Changing Places in the UK to enable every disabled user the freedom to plan any journey they desire in the knowledge that their needs are catered for.