(From the Changing Places website)

Thousands of people with profound and multiple learning disabilities cannot use standard accessible toilets.

They need support from one or two carers to use the toilet or to have their continence pad changed.

Standard accessible toilets do not provide changing benches or hoists. Most are too small to accommodate more than one person. Without Changing Places toilets, the person with disabilities is put at risk, and families are forced to risk their own health and safety by changing their daughter or son on a toilet floor.

This is dangerous, unhygienic and undignified.

It is now accepted and expected that everyone has a right to live in the community, to move around within it and access all its facilities. Government policy promotes the idea of ‘community participation’ and ‘active citizenship’, but for some people with disabilities the lack of a fully accessible toilet is denying them this right.

Although the numbers are increasing, there are still not enough Changing Places toilets. There are currently no suitable Changing Places toilets in the Torfaen area at the moment; the nearest is in Ebbw Vale or Cardiff.

Providing these toilets in public places would make a dramatic difference to the lives of thousands of people who desperately need these facilities.

What are Changing Places toilets?

People with profound and multiple learningdisabilities, as well as other serious impairmentssuch asspinal injuries, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis or an acquired brain injury, often need extra facilities to allow them to use the toilets comfortably.

Changing Places toilets are different to standard disabled toilets with extra features and more space to meet these needs.

Each Changing Places toilet provides:

- a height adjustable adult-sized changing bench

- a tracking hoist system, or mobile hoist if this is not possible.

- adequate space in the changing area for the disabled person and up to two carers

- a centrally placed toilet with room either side for the carers

- a screen or curtain to allow the disabled person and carer some privacy.

- wide tear off paper roll to cover the bench

- a large waste bin for disposable pads

- a non-slip floor.

We the undersigned wish to see fully-accessible Changing Places toilets installed in our public places, to better serve all residents of Torfaen.