Signposting - Equipment - Wheelchairs - Wiltshire Wheelchair Service

To find out about getting a wheelchair, take a look at the information on the Local Offer website by clicking [here]. You can contact the service on 01225 899130. You can also find more information on the [Wiltshire Health and Care website].

Wheelchair Voucher Scheme

Personal wheelchair budgets are replacing the wheelchair voucher scheme. They build on progress to offer personal health budgets to more groups of people and ensure people receive care that is right for them. For more information, click [HERE].

National Wheelchair Alliance - national campaign

You will be aware from previous WPCC information, that we are proactively working with the Wiltshire Wheelchair Service to improve the service in response to parent carer feedback. The National Wheelchair Alliance recently launched a national campaign to raise awareness of the plight of wheelchair users and the varying levels of service given by wheelchair services and providers. The new Wheelchair Charter, which included case studies from two parent carers, was launched by Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson at Speaker’s House in the Houses of Parliament on 20th July 2015.

A full press release of the launch can be found [here].

The full charter can be found [here].

So far, there have been over 1,800 pledges of support for the Charter and the Campaign to improve Wheelchair Services, but we need many more pledges to ensure that NHS England and the Department of Health have sight of the strength of support behind this initiative. The WPCC has written to the Chair of the Wiltshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) as the commissioner of this service in Wiltshire, to urge them to sign up to the Charter and we asked them to consider the following actions to ensure that the wheelchair service in our area really does meet the objectives of the Charter:-

• Ensure that the provision of wheelchair services is discussed at each relevant CCG governing body meeting and at the local Heath and Well Being Board to determine if you are meeting the Charter expectations with your own service specifications.
  

• Where you identify that improvements are needed, engage with your service users and carers to ensure that you agree what the service improvements can be achieved and implement those improvements together with all of your local wheelchair service stakeholders.
  
• Discuss the Charter with your local wheelchair service provider and talk with them about how, together, you can meet the ambitions of the Wheelchair Charter principles.
  
• When tendering for wheelchair services base the tendering exercise on each provider’s ability to deliver against the charter principles.
• Obtain the wheelchair service dataset from your providers and use it to inform improvement conversations at contract meetings.
  

We would like to invite you to pledge your support for the Charter which you can do by following the link [here].
More information about the National Wheelchair Alliance can be found on their [website].