Short Breaks for Disabled Children Initiative has recently funded a PAL portable pool lift at the Runnymede Swimming Pool, part of Castle Point Leisure in Essex, ensuring the pool is now easily accessible for disabled swimmers.
Most people are aware of the benefits of swimming as part of a healthy and active lifestyle regardless of whether a person is disabled or able bodied. Furthermore, people recovering from a short term injury, or managing an ongoing disability, will discover swimming can play an integral role as part of a therapy and rehabilitation programme. Now, thanks to the funding from Short Breaks, swimmers requiring help can use the pool lift for easy and safe entry and exit from the pool.
Lee Payne, Duty Manager at the Runnymede Pool, explained: “The lift, which was supplied and installed by mobility experts Dolphin Mobility, has ensured the pool is fully accessible to all swimmers. We have a number of members with moderate to severe disabilities who use the facilities with their carers and they have found the pool hoist invaluable. The PAL portable pool lift is incredibly reliable and very easy to operate and we would certainly recommend other centres have a pool lift, as it enables disabled people to benefit from all the positive effects of being in the water. We are extremely grateful to Short Breaks for Disabled Children for funding the lift.”
Lee added: “Feedback from both staff and users has been very positive with staff commenting on how user friendly the hoist is and users saying how secure and comfortable they feel when being hoisted.”
The PAL is a fully portable unit; users can be hoisted in and out of the water from all sides of the pool, whilst the padded handle and ball bearing casters make the hoist extremely easy to manoeuvre. A push button control raises and lowers the chair and rotates it up to 240 degrees. The PAL is ideal for centres that require accessibility to more than one pool location or who wish to store the unit away when not in use.
The Short Breaks for Disabled Children Initiative (formerly Aiming High for Disabled Children) is a national transformation programme for disabled children’s services in England. Its vision is that all families with disabled children and young people will have the support they need to live a better quality of life.
Georgina Parkin, Project Manager for the Initiative, said: “The Disabled Children’s Short Breaks Grant is provided by the Department for Education and has revenue and capital funding. The funding is to help achieve the wider vision for short break transformation, including improvements to facilities that enable participation in everyday life, to help reduce family stress and potential breakdown. In Essex we have used the funding to provide adaptations and equipment for community short break providers, improving access to play spaces and the provision of Changing Places facilities, and improvements in access to community leisure facilities. To date we have funded a total of 20 hoists and pool lifts supplied by Dolphin Mobility.
“Christian and the team at Dolphin have provided an excellent service to us and the families we work with. They have been proactive and flexible and have met our demanding specification and requirements with enthusiasm and professionalism. The equipment supplied by Dolphin Mobility has significantly improved the accessibility of community based short-breaks and feedback from the families and short break providers has been extremely positive.”
Pool lifts are the ideal solution for making swimming pools disabled-friendly and encouraging more disabled and older people to turn to swimming as an extracurricular activity, helping them to keep fit and have fun. They can be used in hotels, leisure centres, holiday resorts, schools, colleges and universities – anywhere there is a swimming pool.
About Dolphin Mobility Ltd
Dolphin Mobility is part of the Dolphin Lifts Group, specialist in the supply of products for the disabled and the leading independent suppliers of stairlifts in the UK. Dolphin supply, install and maintain stairlifts, step lifts, hoists, wheelchair lifts and pool lifts.
