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108
Grab-rails in toilets and bathrooms
Handrails by steps
Erection of ramp
General flat adaptations in three cases
Two examples can be quoted of extensive help given to very severely
disabled residents of the borough. A professional man, almost completely
incapacitated, has been assisted in his appeal to be helped to continue
in self-employment and with the running of his home. This has been
achieved by making him a long-term interest-free loan so that adaptations
to his house could be effected to make it possible for him to be cared
for at home. The only alternative to this would have been life in
hospital or special institution where he could not have continued to
carry out his work and would have eventually succumbed to institutional
dependence.
The second example concerns a lady with a crippling neurological
disease which makes communication and mobility difficult. The hospital
service has supplied this lady with a "Possum" and the Council have been
financially responsible for the electrical and other installation required.
The "Possum" (trade name for the device Patient Operated Selector
Mechanisms for the Severely Disabled) enables her to manage her home from
a wheel-chair and perform a range of activities including use of telephone,
control of heating and radio, admission of callers to her home and the
operation of an alarm system. This makes it possible for her husband
to leave her alone for some hours at a time, which he had previously
been unable to do.
In both cases the disabled residents are now able to experience
a dimension of living from which their severe handicaps would normally
have excluded them.