NHS delays leave thousands facing long wait for wheelchairs

Thousands of disabled people face long delays to receive an NHS wheelchair, the first official figures on the subject show.

One in five children who need a wheelchair are being forced to wait beyond the supposed maximum 18 weeks, as are almost one in six adults. Campaigners say the figures reveal a “postcode lottery” in provision across England.

Some 7,200 people who received a wheelchair between October and December had waited at least 19 weeks, despite the NHS Constitution guaranteeing access to one within 18 weeks.

NHS England does not record how long over the 18-week threshold patients have waited for a wheelchair. But the charity Muscular Dystrophy UK says it knows of young adults who within the past year had waited more than eight months.

The NHS England figures obtained by the Health Service Journal (HSJ) show that those with the greatest need for the equipment can face the longest waits.

Nic Bungay, director of campaigns at Muscular Dystrophy UK, told HSJ that long waits for a wheelchair appropriate for their needs were stopping young people “going out independently … and accessing university, work and friends”.

An estimated one in 50 Britons is believed to use a wheelchair to go to work or school, get to the shops, look after their children or undertake other tasks. The Wheelchair Alliance, led by Paralympic champion Lady Grey-Thompson, claims “great variation in ability to access assessment and obtain service provision”, as well as delays in receiving equipment and having it repaired, were affecting too many people.

The campaign group is urging the NHS to ensure equality of access for everyone who needs a wheelchair, which “would prevent confusion and disadvantage when education needs mean a user moving to another area or changing their GP [and put] an end arbitrary age discrimination. This is especially the case where very young children may or may not be provided with chairs depending solely on where they live.”

Almost 40% of adults with high or specialist wheelchair needs, who are defined as “fully dependent on their wheelchair for all mobility needs”, wait more than nine weeks for the NHS to decide what kind of wheelchair they need. A further 37% wait more then nine weeks to then receive their equipment. Slightly smaller numbers of children with the same level of need have to wait the same lengths of time, the HSJ discovered.

The data also shows that waits for wheelchairs lengthened significantly between April and June and the last three months of 2016, especially for adults.

NHS England said it accepted that some local NHS clinical commissioning groups needed to get wheelchairs to those in need more quickly.

“While the majority of children and adults get their wheelchairs within a few weeks, there are parts of the country where local services are not sufficiently responsive and we fully agree that needs to change,” a spokesman said.

The organisation has pledged to halve the number of children waiting more than 18 weeks by April 2018 and eliminate overly long waits for anybody by April 2019.

NHS delays leave thousands facing long wait for wheelchairs

Wheelchairs have come a long way – shame the NHS hasn’t | Lucy Webster

Gone are the days of clunky wheelchairs seemingly designed to hinder as much as to help – at least for some. The latest promising development in the disability world comes from ex-Royal Marine Phillip Eaglesham, who was almost paralysed after contracting Q-fever on his last day in Afghanistan. When he began to lose strength, he used a Segway to get around and realised how helpful its versatility was. Now that he cannot use one, he has designed a new chair that copies some of the Segway’s features to allow wheelchair users to manoeuvre easily and, most importantly, raise themselves up to eye-level and have a decent conversation.

My electric wheelchair is nowhere near as cool, but I can raise myself to just below standard eye-height. It’s hard to express how much this helps me have a normal life. Yes, of course it means that I can reach things on shelves and whatnot. But it also means I can do typical twentysomething activities such as introduce myself in a noisy environment or even, God forbid, sit at a bar.

Without it, crowded places such as clubs become a nightmare, as does meeting new people. People are conditioned to notice others of a standard height and to patronise those whose heads are more at the level of a child’s. My cerebral palsy makes it hard to project my voice, so being able to raise myself up allows me to engage with others as an equal.

Yet the relevant authorities do not believe that features such as this are important. The NHS wheelchair service will only provide wheelchairs that meet medical needs; independence and social needs are ignored. The result is that decent wheelchairs, and by extension a decent quality of life, are reserved for those who can afford them – and they can be prohibitively expensive. The new design is projected to cost a tidy £10,000.

My friend Anna has spinal muscular atrophy, and relies on a highly specialised chair that can transform into a standing frame to help retain her muscle strength. Last year her old chair malfunctioned – throwing her to the ground, leaving her with sprained ankles. Since then, while she fundraises for a replacement, she has been given a manual chair that she cannot move at all, and a borrowed powerchair that does not meet her needs. The model she needs, that will allow her to go about her daily life, costs £24,000. The NHS provided a voucher for £1,295, the cost of its standard chair. This barely makes a dent in the total sum needed. Over a year later, Anna is finally ready to order the right chair. Others may not be able to work so hard to raise money.

For some disabled people, our wheelchairs are the substitute for our legs. Yet the way we treat disabled people is like asking someone who has broken both legs to pay for the operation to fix the second break – and this from a government that aims to get more of us in work, while remaining indifferent to helping us do so.

Inventions like Eaglesham’s have the potential to make disabled people’s lives much better. But with so many people unable to access a chair that is even remotely suited to their lives and needs, progress seems far off. As technology improves, the possibility of better equipment grows, but so does the gap between those who can and cannot afford it. Only the state can level this cruel inequality.

Wheelchairs have come a long way – shame the NHS hasn’t | Lucy Webster

Canes, Wheelchairs, And Awareness

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People walking with canes or in wheelchairs are especially vulnerable to other people not noticing them and getting bumped or pushed. The author encourages people to look up from their smart phones more.

Canes, Wheelchairs, And Awareness