Finding wheelchair accessible housing... how?

lessonlearned

I don't know if this helps or not.

As from 2007, to comply with EU building regulations, all new build properties have to be fully wheelchair accessible i.e easy access to the front doors, staircases wide enough to take a stairlift, internal doors wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair.

If you are forced to stay renting within the private sector perhaps you could try looking at post 2007 properties to see if anything suits your needs. Often flats are a good option because many of them have open-plan lounge/dining/kitchen areas - easier wheelchair access.

The big problem with flats is the maintenance charges. If the block contains a lift then maintenance charges will be higher. If you can find one then a ground floor flat in a building without a lift would be your best bet.

I'm sorry that you have incurred debts of £6000 to buy a wheelchair. Social Services should have arranged for an assessment - wheelchair services then should supply you with at least one chair free of charge. An occupational therapist should do the assessment.

Social services should also supply you with any other equipment necessary, walking frames, bathing aids etc. They should also arrange for fitting any aids such as grab rails etc.

My husband is in receipt of DLA - both mobility and personal care. We use the mobility component for a vehicle and wheelchair services provided a powered wheelchair. We also have a couple of manual wheelchairs - one provided by wheelchair services and one we paid for ourselves.

Re manual wheelchairs - just as a note of caution.

If anyone is thinking of buying their own please be aware that some mobility specialists charge far more than they should.

I priced one at our local mobility specialist for over £450, I purchased an identical one from Costco for £80.

Also if this helps anyone - ASDA now sell a small range of mobility equipment - hand rails £11 a pair, transit chairs (i.e. small four wheels as opposed to a self propelling wheelchair with two large front wheels and two small rear wheels) for around £70.

Hope this helps a bit and that you get sorted soon.

Lum

There doesn't seem to be much in the way of new build properties going on in this part of Wales it seems, though it is worth looking out for. The biggest problem is going to be the specialist shower that my partner needs. That sort of thing is just not going to happen except in horrendously expensive places that actually have a dedicated shower unit.

Moving into a flat will likely be an act of last resort, we both swore when we moved out of one in 2007 that never again are we going to share ceiling space with anyone else, after living above a guy who loved to use power tools at 7AM and below a woman with 5 kids who fitted hardwood flooring with no underlay. Not what you need when you both have "spoons" diseases and need all the rest you can get on a weekend.

As for the chair, wheelchair services were not able to help us, the problem is all the different bits of the NHS don't take the person as a whole into consideration. My partner has multiple conditions that individually would not require a chair, so it was hard enough getting the doctors to admit she even needed one! Asking them to also consider my limited ability to lift stuff seems like a fruitless exercise.

Having a full on power chair would have basically left my partner unable to access her office and therefore unable to work, and there is no NHS manual chair light enough that I would be capable of lifting, nor are there any that will fit in her car. In any case she wouldn't be able to propel a manual chair for long enough to do a full days work, so this chair was really the only option.

To make things worse, the wheelchair voucher scheme doesn't exist in Wales, so if none of the NHS chairs are suitable you're on your own.

A lot of thought went into this as we incurred that debt before we even knew if she'd get DLA. Her car has a fair bit of life left in it as 90s Japanese cars were actually built to last (plus she really likes it) so best to get a chair to fit the car, we'll be done paying for the chair (with the DLA money) long before we reach a point where the car needs changing, and at that point we'll have a nice chair, and have the option to get a motability car. In the years in between the £50ish a week mobility component can be used for something else.

It's possible that she may end up needing a power chair in the future. So long as this doesn't happen before we're done paying off the current chair, we're fine, can get a power chair off the NHS and a motability car when she needs those. In the meantime she much prefers the power assisted manual chair as it's more like moving under your own steam, and she gets to keep her car.

Here is the chair in question, and the wheels.

Once I've loaded her chair into the car and (if she's having a bad day) helped her get to the car, she's able to drive to wherever (e.g. work) on her own, unload and assemble the chair on her own, do the transfer and wheel about to places completely independently. So I'm not sorry we incurred £6000 worth of debt for it. Totally worth it. If we can get into an accessible house, she'd be able to manage fine on her own and I can stop worrying about the next time I have to go into hospital.

Parva

Lum, could I ask what the wheelchair in the picture actually is and what it does, I'm curious? I currently have a self-propelled wheelchair and indeed go to pick up a much lighter model than my current one next Monday (at last) but the one you show pictured looks as though it has its own internal motor which I'm guessing can be charged overnight and charges when going downhill to provide assistance when pushing oneself?

Maybe I'm completely wrong. I just wondered as I would dearly love something powered but it's just impractical for me to use one in the home and would be too cumbersome to lug into and out of the boot all of the time.

Lum

Those are Alber E-Motion wheels, they can be fitted to a variety of chairs by fitting an adaptor plate. How they work is a little sensor in the pushrim that detects you trying to move the chair, and then turns the motor.

Actually using it feels pretty much the same as pushing yourself around in a manual chair, only a lot lighter. They really are awesome. Shame they cost nearly 4 grand though!

I have no idea if they do regenerative braking, but it takes about 3 days for my partner to get the charge level down to 2 bars (maximum is 5) at which point we get nervous and put them on charge anyway.

As my partner has ME, and problems with her shoulder joints. The existence of these wheels is the only thing that's kept her out of a power chair.

The chair is a Kuschall Champion, and it's main feature is how small it folds, and how easily it folds. The back folds flat onto the chair and the footrest folds upwards between the front forks, resulting in an L shaped unit that fits nicely on the passenger seat of my partner's S13 Nissan 200SX, which is not normally a car suitable for a wheelchair user.

The wheels also come with their own anti tippers that can also be used to jack up the rear of the chair to make it easier to remove the wheels, so she does that while sitting in the car, then rolls them across her lap and onto the back seats, before unclipping the anti tippers passing the chair over into the passenger seat. Removing the anti tippers would probably not be necessary in a bigger car.


There are a few caveats with the E-Motion wheels that they don't advertise, that you should be aware of:

1) You can't pick them up by the pushrims. This puts the entire weight of the wheel onto the motion sensors, which can damage them. Alber's own marketing materials even show somebody lifting them by the rims!

2) The charging LEDs are obnoxiously bright, which could be annoying if you live in an accessible house and intend to transfer to bed and then put the wheels on charge

3) They need to be charged in a (mostly) vertical position as they recalibrate themselves while charging.

4) If some plonker stands on your pushrim, this will trigger the sensor and send you shooting forward.

5) If you need any repairs doing, you'll be without them for a while as the nearest repair centre is in Germany.

Parva

Ah thanks for that, very enlightening. Something like that would be absolutely ideal for me as I do struggle in the unpowered wheelchair at times, particularly on inclines but don't feel that I'm poorly enough to need an electric wheelchair of the variety that Madge uses on 'Benidorm'. Guess I better get saving.