Through our work this year as co-sponsor of the Changing Places campaign and friends of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, we had the great pleasure of speaking with the very lovely Hayleigh Barclay recently who is a Muscular Dystrophy Campaign Trailblazer and Changing Places user.
Have you ever wondered who uses Changing Places and why they are so incredibly important?
In our latest blog post, Hayleigh explains all.
“I have to admit that starting this small article is proving difficult. How exactly does a person explain the reasons why having a Changing Place facility is so important without going into highly personal details? Then I remembered that bathroom habits are universal and we are all human at the end of the day… Plus the world never changed with someone having an ego so here goes…
My name is Hayleigh Barclay, I am 27 and have Spinal Muscular Atrophy. I won’t go into details about my condition; Google is just a click away. The main point is I require the use of a fold down bed for moving and handling reasons when using an accessible bathroom. Unfortunately in this day and age it is still proving extremely difficult to find such facilities available. That’s not to say that things aren’t improving, most places now have a disabled toilet available, but it is safe to say that the one size fits all approach (the basic standard toilet) does not fit all.
For a lot of people, including myself, planning a journey and visit to such places as shopping centres, cinemas, tourist attractions, concert venues etc revolves around the availability of a suitable toilet facility. As you can imagine this can be extremely frustrating and time consuming, not to mention highly degrading when trying to plan around a basic bodily function.
In situations where there is no information on the place of interest’s website it might take a phone call to ascertain the situation. Now some of you will recognise how these phone calls usually go… Being put through to various departments and speaking to numerous people explaining the situation in full over and over and usually receiving the same vague response of uncertainty and confusion… “She needs what?” Needless to say this can get very tiring…
So what happens if you end up at a venue and need to access a toilet and discover there is no Changing Place facility available? There has been times when I’ve had to lie on the floor which is neither safe for myself or my assistant or hygienic. I know it can be hard for anyone who hasn’t the same issue to imagine this situation but for those in a similar situation this is an all too familiar reality. Let’s take this back to basics – is this degrading? Yes. Is this happening to other people? Yes. Is this a nationwide problem? Yes. Does this need to change? Yes!
The answer is the need for more Changing Places facilities. Fact.”
By Hayleigh Barclay
A typical Changing Places shown above which is located at Marina Way, Hartlepool