SUDBURY campaigners have joined a national call for special toilets for people with such severe disabilities they cannot use a standard accessible cubicle.
Members of Sudbury and District Mencap combined the plea with their annual street collection in the town centre.
As well as collecting money to help support local people with learning disabilities, they handed out postcards for people to post to t
heir MP as part of the campaign to promote more “changing places” for people with disabilities.
The campaign calls for Changing Places toilets to be installed in every town, so that parents and carers do not have to change a disabled family member on a dirty toilet floor, with little or no privacy.
The toilets are equipped with an adjustable changing bench and a hoist to allow people to use the toilet with assistance or to have their continence pads changed.
Sudbury Mencap chairman, Valerie Goodchild, said: “It has long been recognised that parents of young children need proper changing facilities for their babies and toddlers, and parents of older children and adults with learning disabilities deserve no less.
“It is unacceptable that people with profound and multiple learning disabilities who live in Sudbury don’t have the right facilities and have to suffer the indignity of being changed on dirty toilet floors, or become prisoners in their own home, unable to enjoy a family visit to the town centre like everyone else.”
l For more information about the Changing Places campaign and to sign an online petition, go to: www.mencap.org.uk/ changelives.
