Castle Espie Receives Top Toilet Award
WWT Castle Espie Wetland Centre is flushed with pride after picking up a top award for providing improved changing facilities for disabled children. Castle Espie was awarded the orange level for its facilities by the Firefly Garden, a not-for-profit online forum for the children’s special needs community.
Firefly Garden’s Space for Change Campaign is aimed at encouraging businesses across the UK to improve their existing toilet / changing facilities at the same time as recognising venues that are already better than average.
Castle Espie has been recognised by providing a large private space that accommodates a child, their wheelchair and carer together with a height adjustable changing bench and waste disposal facilities.
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The father of one regular disabled user from Newtownards believes the honour is well deserved, describing Castle Espie’s facilities as “really helpful”. Daniel Smyth, aged six had profound and multiple learning difficulties, he can’t walk or talk and relies on his parents for his daily care needs. Daniel regularly uses the facilities at Castle Espie on family days out with his younger brother.
His dad Jonny said, “The space provided at Castle Espie makes a day out with Daniel so much more straightforward. We can relax and enjoy ourselves knowing that we have a clean, large space to change him in. We won’t have to cut short a day out because of poor facilities.”
Sarah Clarke, Centre Manager at Castle Espie continued:
“It’s an honour to receive this award from the Firefly Garden and to be in a position to offer these facilities to families with disabled children. With a firefly garden survey revealing that 86% of families with disabled children have had to leave a venue earlier than planned because of poor changing facilities we were determined to make small changes by adapting our existing first aid room, to hopefully make a big difference to visiting families.
We’d encourage those familiar with Castle Espie to spread the word that these facilities are now in place so that many more families can enjoy and uninterrupted day out together.”
The Firefly Garden encourages parents, grandparents, carers and therapists to share advice, review products and campaign for change. The Space to Change campaign is recruiting champions to visit venues in their local area to encourage them to improve their existing facilities.
It is also asking businesses that would like to improve their facilities or who already have better than average disabled changing facilities to get in touch with them by e mailing info@firefly-garden.com
