Joshua Sur­tees

The things wheel­chair users go through: bumpy pave­ments, steep ramps and steep­er hills, a lack of step-free ac­cess to pub­lic build­ings. Not to men­tion the phys­i­cal aches and pains one's body goes through.

Last week, a group of car­ers and vol­un­teers from com­mu­ni­ty groups across T&T had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence what it's like to be in a wheel­chair and, more im­por­tant­ly, re­ceived train­ing on mea­sur­ing and fit­ting wheel­chair to their users to pre­vent fur­ther dam­age or de­bil­i­ta­tion due to ill-fit­ting chairs.

At a three-day work­shop at the head­quar­ters of Foun­da­tion for the En­hance­ment and En­rich­ment of Life (Feel), or­gan­ised by di­rec­tor Ele­na Vil­lafana-Sylvester and run by the Church of Je­sus Christ of Lat­ter Day Saints (LDS), they learnt the fun­da­men­tals, stip­u­lat­ed by the WHO (World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion).

"Pre­vi­ous to this (rul­ing by the WHO), you just came, you sat in a chair and you took that wheel­chair home," says Vil­lafana. "It could be the wrong size. It could be too short for your back. If it was too tight it could rub against your legs and cause you to de­vel­op sores. If it was too wide then you could be mov­ing around in the chair, im­pact­ing your spine."

Af­ter train­ing from phys­i­cal ther­a­pist Steve Spencer of the LDS, the vol­un­teers were cer­ti­fied to mea­sure, build and fit brand new wheel­chairs, 350 of which are sup­plied by the LDS, the Mor­mon church based in Utah, every year.

Re­ceiv­ing the train­ing were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NGOs from all over T&T. To­co Help­ing Hands, Ce­dros Com­mu­ni­ty Group, New Vi­sion Min­istries in Diego Mar­tin, Par­adise Hill Women in Ac­tion from Blan­chisseuse, El­damo bus dri­vers and the To­ba­go Em­pow­er­ment Foun­da­tion and In The Mean Time from east Trinidad.

They take it in turns to sit in and ride a wheel­chair while the group lis­tens and re­sponds to their phys­i­cal re­quire­ments.

"An im­por­tant part of the train­ing is for you to un­der­stand what is com­fort­able," Vil­lafana says, "so you can iden­ti­fy is­sues."

One hun­dred and twen­ty wheel­chairs were dis­trib­uted be­tween Jan­u­ary and Oc­to­ber 2013 to peo­ple who re­quired them due to ill­ness, ac­ci­dents, crime and age­ing.

Any­body who ac­quires a wheel­chair from Feel is guar­an­teed it will fit cor­rect­ly and func­tion prop­er­ly. But to qual­i­fy for a free wheel­chair you must come from what Feel de­scribes as "the poor­est of the poor." If some­one can af­ford to buy their own wheel­chair they must go to Pharm­co or AA Laquis.

To qual­i­fy for a Feel chair, ap­pli­cants must com­plete a so­cio-eco­nom­ic as­sess­ment form with their age, ad­dress, type of dwelling, em­ploy­ment sta­tus, util­i­ty bills, whether they rent or own, num­ber and age of any chil­dren, payslips and gov­ern­ment sub­sis­tence doc­u­ments.

Vil­lafana finds an ap­pli­ca­tion form at ran­dom. "This per­son lives in a wood­en house, sin­gle-storey, that they own. They are a pen­sion­er and it's in Coun­try Trace, Fan­ny vil­lage, Point Fortin. That's rur­al. The util­i­ty bill is low. He prob­a­bly has a very ba­sic house­hold, he's cer­tain­ly not us­ing in­ter­net and a/c. ...This one is a big yes, stamp."

As the care work­ers fin­ish their short lunch break and head out­side, steer­ing their wheel­chairs down a long ramp at the Fer­nan­des In­dus­tri­al Es­tate com­pound in Laven­tille, they are be­gin­ning to ex­pe­ri­ence ex­act­ly what dis­abil­i­ty can mean.

Jan­ice John of In The Mean Time slow­ly as­cends the ramp but ends up do­ing a 180-de­gree spin and rolling back down. Desmond Baldeo, a young bus dri­ver for dis­abled chil­dren and the el­der­ly, says, "Com­mon sense told me wheel­chairs were ad­justable, but I didn't know the im­por­tance of it."

Spencer ex­plains, "Wheel­chairs can be like a pair of ill-fit­ting shoes. If they're not com­fort­able they won't get used and be­come dis­card­ed. They would rather not use their wheel­chair. If car­ers are skilled and trained, then it im­proves the qual­i­ty of util­i­sa­tion a great deal.

The next day, a re­al-life ex­er­cise is car­ried out. Twen­ty-five re­cip­i­ents come to Feel to re­ceive wheel­chairs and the trainees have their first op­por­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate, as­sess and dis­trib­ute prop­er­ly-fit­ted chairs.

"When we leave," says Spencer, "we'll leave Trinidad in good hands."

For more in­for­ma­tion, con­tact Feel at 624-7758 or 624-7808