buy a wheelchair in london
The new Rotary in London website went live on 02 August 2009. The page you are looking for has moved to a new location. Please use the options below to find the page on the new website. For one reason or another (mis-typed URL, faulty referral from another site, out-of-date search engine listing or we simply deleted a file) the page you were after is not here - this site has recently undergone a major re-working, so that might explain why you got this page instead. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused. Disabled Gear sells unused and unwanted mobility aids and disability equipment. Users sell second-hand wheelchairs, scooters, standing frames, hand bikes, mobility and handling equipment, adapted cars and vans. Other places you can sell unwanted equipment include: Freecycle groups match people who have things they want to get rid of with people who can use them. Stoma Aid is a new initiative that will collate unused ostomy supplies in the UK and redistribute them to patients living with a stoma in developing countries that cannot afford or access supplies.
Weekdays: 9am to 5pm Find local support and information Browse all content aboutAs a city that has everything from 24 hour Starbucks to round the clock hairdressers, you’d think London would be easy to navigate. Just jump on the Tube and off you go, right?
buy office chair edinburgh Wrong, not it you’re a wheelchair user. Here are my top tips for how to navigate London in a wheelchair without losing the will to live. 1. Avoid the Tube altogether There are only a handful of Tube stops that are fully wheelchair accessible, and the chances of the one you are leaving from and the one you are headed to being fully accessible is very slim. 2. Plan, plan, plan When I get off at Waterloo I already know exactly how to get where I’m going and how long it will take. 3. Leave extra time Despite knowing how long a journey should take, factors such as traffic and delays can always be counted on to extend your trip.
4. Get acquainted with the bus routes One if the cheapest ways to travel as a wheelchair user in London is by bus. Each is equipped with a hydrolic ramp that the driver extends out of the back door and which will lead you snugly into the designated wheelchair space on the bus. 5. Travel with friendsI love my independence but find that if I am alone, things like talking to bus drivers and opening doors can be really difficult. If you are headed somewhere you haven’t been before, call ahead. Some places can seem wheelchair friendly but can have steps and sharp corners that will prevent access. 7. Use a map or an app Along with my list of how to get where I’m going, I always have my phone. My smartphone contains my map, in an app. If I need to change plans or make other travel decisions, I always consult my phone. 8. Nab a black cab All of London’s black cabs have to be fitted with a wheelchair ramp and so can transport disabled passengers.
Avoid minicab companies – they are rarely able to accommodate passengers unable to get out of their wheelchair. When there is ‘walking’ factored into your journey, remember it may take you up to twice as long as your map or app suggests. Finding dropped kerbs, safe crossing places and pavements wide enough to traverse takes time all by itself, and isn’t as easy as it should be. My big bag for a day out anywhere starts off with a big travel mug full of coffee and ends with a spare charger for my chair. There is so much in between. Make sure you have everything with you that you really can’t leave home without, and I don’t mean your lime green Prada bag and Jackie O sunglasses. 11. Ask for help Contrary to many of the myths perpetuated about London folk, most are very friendly. I’ve often asked for help when in a jam and the majority of people are very helpful.On the morning my four-year-old daughter was discharged from the hospital in Paris, where she had been staying for 10 days with a broken leg, they gave us a wheelchair to test drive.
You'll be needing one of these at home, they said. We spent the morning navigating the corridors of the ward, unaware of the scale of problems that lay ahead. I was beginning to get worried, though. By then, I had already spent several days trying to organise a wheelchair in London for Ella's return. We had been told that Ella would have to lie more or less flat for at least six weeks. She was encased in plaster all the way down one leg from her waist, was helpless and was as stiff as a board. First, I had called our GP's surgery, which advised me to call the Red Cross and the nearest NHS wheelchair clinic. My mother was also on the case, but our calls had so far turned up nothing. The Red Cross had nothing suitable for a child and, apparently, there would be no NHS wheelchair clinic at the Parkside clinic - our nearest centre, in Southall, west London - for at least two weeks. They would send us a referral form in the meantime. The GP's surgery then suggested social services.
But everywhere we turned it was the same story. Finally, the local occupational therapy department spelled it out. "Funny thing, wheelchairs - they are in a sort of no man's land," we were told. "We can arrange them for permanent use, but not short-term. Try physiotherapy at the hospital." So, we tried physiotherapy at Ealing hospital, as well as the children's disabilities unit, the paediatric ward, the fracture clinic and St John Ambulance. It felt like being stuck in revolving doors. Have you tried the wheelchair clinic? Tried the Red Cross? And sometimes the answers were strange: "Perhaps you can buy one at the mobility shop." Or: "Have you tried Boots?" On the day we arrived back in London, we went to see the GP and sat with Ella lying rigid across us in the waiting room. It was obvious that we urgently needed a wheelchair, the doctor said, and Ealing hospital had failed to come up with one because we were not yet registered there. We got a letter for the fracture clinic, requesting a wheelchair and explaining our situation.
The GP's secretary would ring the clinic in the morning, find out how to proceed and then call us. Receiving no call, we rang the secretary, who suggested we "get down to casualty and take it from there". It seemed a sure way of getting a wheelchair - sitting in A&E with Ella's rigid body lying across the seats.But after she had been registered and her x-rays seen by the consultant, the nurse told us it was not going to happen. "If the accident had happened here," she said, "the hospital would have sorted it out." My husband was going away the next day and I don't drive. I began to panic. Without a car, the only way to carry Ella was in my arms. Surely the hospital could find a wheelchair for an immobile four-year-old. So I declared: "I am not leaving this hospital without a wheelchair." Several nurses tried to help us. "Have you thought of a pram with a plank across it?" one suggested. Again, though, we were told that there would be no wheelchair clinic for two weeks. We waited most of the afternoon for the hospital's senior physiotherapist to come out of a meeting.
She was unable to help; there were only two wheelchairs in the hospital (which serves a borough of 1m people) for the weekend, but she would call the wheelchair clinic and try to speed up our referral. Finally, we were offered a baby buggy so low and narrow that Ella would have had to lie with her arms clamped to her sides and her cast sticking up in the air. We left empty-handed - except, of course, for Ella. About 10 days later, we received a second copy of the wheelchair clinic's referral form. I rang and was told that our request had been passed to the short-term loan unit in Willesden - the other side of Ealing from Southall. Did I want the number? By this stage, however, I had more or less given up on getting a wheelchair from our local services and we had grown accustomed either to carrying Ella in our arms or improvising with a borrowed buggy that had been made abroad and had an unusually sturdy frame. Rita Moloney, office manager of the Parkside wheelchair clinic in Southall told me later that the clinic always "moves heaven and earth for children" and that, had we taken Ella to any of Parkside's other three sites in west London immediately on our return from France, we would have left the same day with a chair.