Care Home and Community Transport

Community transport providers, residential care and nursing homes, taxi services and ambulance trusts all need to consider solutions for safe transportation of wheelchair users. A wheelchair accessible minibus is ideal for the transport needs of a group of people which includes one or more wheelchair users. Standard conversions include lowered floors, counter-balanced ramps and wheelchair security mechanisms.

This is the link to read guidance on safe transportation of wheelchairs.

Access to community transport vehicles can be an issue for people with reduced mobility, whether or not they use a wheelchair. Solutions may include powered steps and lifting platforms that lower to ground level, powered lifts to transfer passengers into the vehicle, and stair climbers which allow wheelchair users to be taken up steps in their chair, without strain for the carer.

The risks to personnel from patient handling manoeuvres are illustrated by the experience of an NHS Ambulance Trust, which reduced the number of staff absences due to musculoskeletal injury from nearly half of all sickness absence to just 6% of the total, when they introduced powered stair climbers.