Thanks to public toilet facilities, most people can leave their houses, visit a shopping centre, attend a concert by their favourite artist, watch a live cricket match and enjoy the outdoors in a public park knowing there will be toilet facilities nearby.
However, what if appropriate public toilet facilities were unavailable, requiring you to leave a concert, cinema, or shopping centre earlier than planned or, perhaps, stay close to home? These are some of the issues and choices people with severe or profound disabilities face every day.
Standard accessible toilets built today are not suitable for all people with a disability. People with severe or profound disabilities and their carers require accessible toilet facilities with greater circulation areas and additional access provisions to use the toilet safely and comfortably. This may include people with multiple learning disabilities, as well as spinal injuries, spina bifida, motor neurone disease, multiple sclerosis or an acquired brain injury.
Due to the lack of adequate toilet facilities, people with disability and their families are often left with no choice other than to stay close to home. For families desperate to leave the house, a lack of accessible toilets may result in them changing their loved ones on the floor of a public toilet facility. This option is unhygienic and undignified and presents health risks for the carer due to heavy lifting (e.g. back injuries).
In response, the Changing Places concept was introduced to Australia in 2012. The Changing Places concept is an initiative that was successfully introduced in the UK in 2006. The 550 Changing Places facilities constructed in the UK have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, enabling them to be far more engaged in their local communities.
Changing Places toilets are different from accessible toilet facilities. They are accessible toilet facilities with greater circulation areas, height-adjustable, adult-sized changing benches and a tracking hoist system.
Adequate provision of these Changing Places toilets in Australia would allow people with severe or profound disabilities to leave their houses and enjoy day-to-day activities without worrying about the availability of appropriate toilet facilities. Changing Places toilets would also improve the carer’s physical well-being by negating the need to lift the person they are caring for and remedying the everyday stress of planning around their bathroom needs.
Although Changing Places toilets are not required under the Building Code of Australia and the Disability (Access to Premises ― Buildings) Standards 2010, their provision should be considered to enhance the accessibility and daily experience of people from our communities with severe or profound disabilities.
In particular, Changing Places toilets should be provided in main public buildings such as shopping centres, premium train stations, aquatic facilities, major sporting and recreational complexes, major cultural facilities, civic centres, airports and hospitals. These should be provided in addition to standard accessible toilet facilities.
The first few steps of introducing Changing Places to Australia have been made. It is great to see that there are already a few Changing Paces toilet facilities in Melbourne and its surrounding suburbs. However, so far, there is only one Changing Places toilet facility registered with Changing Places in the whole of NSW. Campaigns are underway to introduce a Changing Places toilet facility in Circular Quay and Sydney Olympic Park. However, that is not enough.
Councils, developers, designers and facility managers will have to assume some responsibility for making our built environment and our communities accessible to all.