Ex-changing places

What’s your idea?

We’d like to create an online register of fully accessible toilets. At the moment, ENABLE Scotland is involved in a campaign to get local authorities to install one fully accessible toilet in each area. But we believe that by linking up community centres, public places and even people’s homes, we could provide more options and give people with multiple and complex disabilities the freedom to go anywhere. Once the network and relationships have been established, we could even see people swapping homes for holidays in fully accessible houses.

What is the social need or challenge your idea could address?

People with profound and complex disabilities often have high personal care needs. For these people, standard disabled access is not enough. A proper Changing Places toilet needs to have a toilet with space either side for a carer, an adult-sized height adjustable changing bench and a hoist.

When this is not available, it often means that people cannot have a day out, or have to go home if they need to use the toilet.  Holidays can be impossible. This can lead to social exclusion, both for the disabled person and their carer.

We are supporting the Changing Places campaign with Mencap and PAMIS to ask local authorities to provide at least one in each area. However, in larger areas, this minimum level will not be enough. It seems criminal that so many people could miss out when there may be accessible toilets available up and down the country.

What’s really new about your idea?

ENABLE Scotland was founded in 1954 by a group of parents and is still run by our members. The ethos of mutual support has always underpinned our work, but what is new is the technology and tools that are available.

We’d like to see the online register show a profile for each accessible toilet of home, with usage options, details of who to contact and what sort of notice they would expect before it is used. What we would be clear about is that registering a venue on the site carries no obligation, but opens up a channel of communication between people who could help each other out.

What inspired you to come up with your idea in the first place?

The Changing Places campaign, which we have been involved with through the Cross Party Group on Learning Disability and through our partnership with Mencap, as well as consultation with our members, alerted us to the need for good accessible toilets and venues.

However, it is the mutual support and co-operation that we have seen between our members, most of whom are people with learning disabilities and their families, that inspired us to come up with this solution. We will continue to campaign for local and national government to take this seriously, but we have learned that it is the support that families and communities can give each other that has perhaps the greatest potential to change lives.

From 1-5, what stage of development would you say your idea was in?

I would say that we are at level three. The campaign and the need are quite well developed, but we have a lot of work to do on identifying how it would work in practice. We have some experience of running forums for our members, but we’d have to be clear about the logistics. E.g would people need to offer their own toilet for use by others if they wanted to make use of the register? How would we regulate it? If it got to the stage of people exchanging their homes for holidays, how would this be facilitated etc?

We’d also need to take some legal advice on whether people would need liability insurance, how we would monitor who was coming into homes or community centres where there are vulnerable people, how people with complex needs could consent to having people come into their homes etc.
I suppose the fact that we have started thinking about these questions shows that the idea is fairly well developed. As far as the day-to-day running is concerned, I think it would be more about facilitating a network than practically administering it.

What can we do for you?

We’d need a geek- we are full of ideas, but don’t have great technical skills. Next, funding. We think the ongoing costs will be minimal, but we don’t have the funds for start-up. It would be good to have advice, but for us the most important communication will be with the people who will use the network.

This idea was submitted by Rosie McIntosh.

Rosie is the PR and Marketing Co-ordinator at ENABLE Scotland.