Campaigners are calling for more Changing Place toilets, a special type of accessible toilet, to be installed in public places for the over 250,000 people in the UK with severe disabilities and their families, who must sometimes “travel hours” to find somewhere usable.
While Changing Places provision has expanded from 30 toilets in 2007 to around 2,600 today as a result of campaigning, there are still many places where they are not available. In Northern Ireland there are only 1.4 Changing Places per 100,000 people.
What are Changing Places toilets?
Changing Places toilets are different from typical accessible toilets in that they are designed for people with complex disabilities. Each lavatory is at least 12 sq m to accommodate a wheelchair user and up to two carers, includes an adult-sized changing bench, a ceiling track hoist and a centrally placed toilet with space on both sides for carers.
They are now a legal requirement in new large public buildings in England and Scotland.
Katrina O’Leary’s 23-year-old daughter Sophie does not have controllable independent movement and so needs a hoist and changing table, making a Changing Places toilet essential.
Sometimes a Changing Places toilet is useful to reposition Sophie or just to “take a break” (Photo: Supplied)“People with complex disabilities can also have sensory sensitivities, so for us, in the absence of chill-out spaces in venues, we use Changing Places toilets to take a break,” she said, adding that the facilities can also be helpful for repositioning Sophie in her chair.
“Imagine going to a doctor’s appointment in a packed waiting room, you know that your child has just soiled their pad, there’s nowhere to change them. It’s really embarrassing, not only for the disabled person, but for yourself and for the other people sitting there. What do you do? Do you leave before your appointment?”
“Without these facilities you just don’t go out. You stay at home, or if you do go out you either come home early or you know your child is sitting there uncomfortably in a soiled pad, which is totally undignified and stressful for everybody.
“It can be very isolating and boring, and you don’t get to experience the world.”
“We can’t make the world inaccessible just because there’s nowhere to go to the toilet,” she said.
Karen Hoe’s son needs a Changing Places toilet because he cannot weight-bear (Photo: Supplied)
“Our whole lives, our every day, are dictated by access to a toilet,” she told The i Paper.
“Shockingly… most of the hospitals that my son needs to get to, we can’t go regularly because there is no suitable toilet,” Ms Hoe said. “That means we either have to forfeit a hospital appointment, which are usually essential, or we need to find a toilet en route, or we have to prepare ourselves for accidents.”
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“If you build it, the disabled community will come, they’ll stay longer, they’ll spend more, they can be fully included. It’s about that commitment to being open to everybody and not discriminating, it’s essential.”
Francis told The i Paper: “One of my daughters has quadriplegic cerebral palsy. She is a wheelchair user and is unable to tell you when she needs the toilet and is still in nappies at almost 12 years of age.
“Since we have been aware of the Changing Places map facility, we plan our days out, trips and travel arrangements around it and where we believe there will be a toilet. It has been a life changer for our family and, as we have heard, for other families.”
A Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “We know how important it is for communities to have access to accessible toilets so everyone can fully participate in their local area.
The Government invested £30m to increase Changing Places provision in England and Wales in 2020, and the Scottish Government has pledged £10m for facilities expected to be rolled out this year.
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