Simon

We have built a number of rooms for wheelchair users in the last 10 years, and although they were all built to best practice at the time, we find that even the ones which are only 6 years old are too small; they were built on a floorplan that where each wheelchari accessible room occupied the footprint of 1.5 regular rooms.  We find students now have larger wheelchairs and also often need special beds  which take up extra space.  

In our latest development the ensuite disabled rooms take up the same area as two single rooms and this seems to be ok for all the students with wheelchairs who have come in recent years.  I would advise building in a little more space than apparently required to avoid costly mistakes and to allow for any further changes in the next few years.  Don't forget about designing rooms in a way which also makes it easy to install a hoist and tracking system from bed to bathroom.  Also think about emergency situtations, we now have a misting system in every room adapted for students with complex disabilities, and manual evac hoists which could be used if electricity is down.

Another key thing to consider is flat sizes.  if your standard flats are for say 4 people, and the wheelchair accessible room takes the space of 2 rooms you may end up with only 3 people in the flat, which limits the number of others that the disabled student can readily interact with, especially if they have helpers who need to be housed nearby.  We would recommend is to put wheelchair accessible rooms in a flat shared by at least 6 people.  This gives the student a chance to easily meet a good number of people.  

We have housed about 12 students with complex disabilities in the last few years, so if you have other questions, please get in touch.  

Hilary

Hilary Simmons
Head of Colleges and Student Life
University House
Lancaster University
LANCASTER
LA1 4YW
00 44 (0)1524 592020
________________________________________
From: Discussion list for disabled students and their support staff. [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Simon Jarvis [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2013 5:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Accessible Halls of Residence

Hello Simon,

Re: number 1, it sounds like the contractor is asking you to do their job for them. They ought to know the standard clearance measurements for an electronic wheelchair user, but assuming they don't know this I'd be inclined to contact an organisation that can provide advice - I've got some contacts I can send you off list as we arranged for an accessibility audit of our existing housing stock just over a year ago.

2. If you don't ask, you don't get - if you are designing something from scratch then I would argue it is pretty important.

3. That's a very interesting question, (our halls are all covered by our in-house security team, who patrol the campus 24/7). If the halls are owned by someone else you'd ideally want some fairly cast-iron assurances that they have a security mechanism in place to safeguard all of the residents - I'd say it was essential this was 24/7 whenever students are resident. Were you thinking of having any live-in staff in each hall?

Best of luck...

Simon



On 30/01/2013 14:44, Simon Morris wrote:
Dear All,

We are currently in the process of working with a third party to build and manage a halls of residence.

I have a couple of questions which I hope some of you may be able to answer.  I have sent this to two forums  as these are varied questions!


1.    As this will be purpose built we want to make sure that the build will provide accessibility to all students.  As such we want to ensure that the accessible rooms can be accessed by the largest of wheelchairs.  The contractor has asked us to provide a maximum size. This is pretty hard to do as no wheelchair is the same.  Does anyone have any ideas or some guidance they can point me in the direction of that would give me a steer to best practice?


2.    I have suggested that we also include an assistance dog toileting area.  Would others agree that this is essential?  I have suggested it is, but also suggested as a compromise that the infrastructure is put in so that one can be put in if required.



3.    My last question is around managing risk.  The contractor will provide monitored CCTV but we need to look at who is responsible, out of hours,  in times of severe crisis, i.e. rape, suicide (threat or actual) and so on.  The security company are looking to the college to provide a response team, but we are interested to know how others manage this sort of risk.  Linked in with this, what arrangements do others have in place for ties where a student might pull an emergency cord out of hours?


Any help would be gratefully received.


Simon Morris - Student Support Manager & Disability Adviser
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Simon Jarvis
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