WashPods are temporary wet room and toileting solutions for people at in their home post trauma or injury

Return Dignity with WashPod Temporary Accessible Wet Rooms

Wed Feb 08, 2023

When daily life, post-trauma or illness, reduces people to living without use of a bathroom, how can we return the dignity of washing and toileting, while working out the long-term solutions?

Washpods Dignity Access Ltd Temporary Wash and Toileting Solutions AccessiblePRS Resource Page

No-one sets out in life hoping to, one day, get a WashPod! That’s because WashPods are a range of temporary disabled wetrooms for the times when life happens or old age and poor health gets the better of you.

Whatever the reasons, the ability to wash with dignity at such a vulnerable time becomes incredibly important - for hygiene and also for mental wellbeing. During these traumatic times, disruption in the home can be deeply upsetting. Having a fast and easy solution has a huge and positive impact.

Equally, the easy ability to remove this solution when it is no longer needed is also attractive.

A Unique Solution to Disabled Bathing

Dignity Access Ltd has a range of different sizes of WashPod to suit most needs and spaces, offering internal and external varieties - with most being installed in only a day. Speed is everything when it comes to dignity, particularly for end-of-life care and hospital discharge. The smaller models in the WashPod range can be installed in four hours.

What are the key benefits of a WashPod?

Modularity enables them to be carried through a property to otherwise inaccessible places.
Flexibility in siting, means they are easily plumbed into a property’s existing sewage and water system.
Pipes can be run quite a long way to the most convenient access point which also makes it easier to ‘make good’ when the WashPod is removed. This is an attractive feature for (private) Landlords and Housing Associations as there are no real adaptations to undertake.

An Alternative to Adaptation

WashPods can be rented or bought. Rental options may suit those with sudden traumas and unexpected disabilities, including strokes and spinal cord injuries, which transform an individual's world into a series of demoralising challenges to navigate. An immediate and interim wet room provides time and space to adjust, while assessing next steps for adapting the home to meet longer-term needs.

Purchasing offers an attractive financial alternative where extensions or large-scale adaptations are expensive, and/or take time to implement - for example, finding an available contractor. It’s also possible to buy a WashPod via the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) via your Local Authority. This route can be a lengthy process and will not be available to everyone, due to eligibility requirements. DFG applications made by a Landlord are not means tested and may be swifter, though many landlords are not aware that they can do this.

For Local Authorities, using WashPod helps them meet the new DFG Guidance in many critical areas, particularly Best Practice Timescale Targets. Many Local Authorities are now using WashPods to provide a DFG Turnaround Service, where the WashPod is classed as “removeable equipment.” This enables a Local Authority to re-use it time after time with only one capital outlay, saving valuable resources.

Some Examples

These unique products have helped many people access the invaluable benefits of hot water on the skin and muscles and the mental wellbeing of a clean, refreshed body. For example: John who lives with Parkinson's was adamant he didn’t want to go into a care home; Luke, a young man hit by a car which mounted the pavement resulting in his full time wheelchair use and washing with the garden hose; Steve lost a leg when a car knocked him off his Vespa motorbike on the way to a school reunion; and Kate, paralysed when an operation went wrong and just wanted to get home to her son for Christmas. Maria had a major stroke and was lucky to be able to live with her sister and a Micro WashPod which could fit in a room with her bed, and Mark an ex-serviceman with a brain tumour who didn’t have to wash from the kitchen sink because the RAF Benevolent Fund stepped up to rent a WashPod.

A Change is Needed

The Social Care Institute has researched that 74% of us would prefer to die at home, but according to Age UK few of us (24%) get the chance and this is often because our homes are not set up to accommodate immobility or disability. Many people also get stuck in hospital, desperately wanting to return home and to their loved ones, but a lack of suitable washing facilities prevents this. The impact of this is usually devastating for them and their families, particularly as many never make it home. Often, a temporary solution is all that’s needed to improve the quality of a life that has already lost so much.