Beach Wheelchairs Bring Joy to Care Home Residents

On Thursday 4 August, Diagrama Foundation’s Edensor Care Home in Clacton-on-Sea took six of their residents to enjoy a day by the sea with two specially adapted wheelchairs which allow users to go on to the sand and into the water.

Wanting to share the experience with others the Edensor team invited local Mamora care home to join them and were delighted when they accepted and brought two of their residents to the seafront to try the chairs.

Muhammed Neeliyath, Registered Manager, Edensor Care Centre, said, “We bought our beach wheelchairs last year thanks to donations from Colchester Catalyst Charity and Pickering Electronics Ltd and they have made such a huge difference to the lives of our residents who use wheelchairs. Traditional wheelchairs are wholly unsuitable for the sand so having the special beach wheelchairs means that we can take our residents on to the sand and into the water. One of our residents said to us, ‘I love doing this as I feel like a child again’ which is so wonderful for the care team to hear.”

The weather was perfect for the day out and everyone enjoyed a picnic and ice cream in the warm sunshine while the residents took it in turns to go on the beach and into the sea.

Muhammed Neeliyath continued, “We currently do not have enough storage space for our beach wheelchairs, and unfortunately, we have to dismantle them and rebuild them every time we want to use them. We would love a shed with enough room to store the assembled chairs. Being able to store them made up rather than in sections would allow us to use them more frequently without the hour it takes us to build them each time we want to go to the beach.”