With housing adaptations taking even longer to deliver with COVID restrictions, AAT is stepping up to help the professionals involved expediate timely and practical interim solutions to avoid exposing clients and their carers to unnecessary significant risk.

Britain’s only truly national stairclimber provider has implemented a plan to give Occupational Therapists and equipment stores teams the preventative solutions to enable clients to live better and safely whilst more permanent adaptations go through its processes.

AAT’s offering includes:

• Remote video technical sessions for OT teams to refresh their knowledge and learn about product developments and their application in expanding environments
• Remote or in-person ^{(with appropriate PPE )}assessments, with or without the Occupational Therapist to expediate timely delivery of a solution
• Fully certified training of the operator to ensure they are comfortable using the equipment
• Provision of equipment immediately (via loan or hire) whilst an order is fulfilled.

“People don’t stop becoming in need of support just because of COVID” says Peter Wingrave, AAT Sales Director. “If anything, workloads are increasing because of the difficulty in executing in person assessments. We all have a duty to prevent exposing clients to unnecessary risk, such as the parent whose child with special needs has grown so they can no longer safely carry them up and down stairs, or the adult whose condition has deteriorated so they can no longer manage stairs on their own but their home is too small to accommodate them moving downstairs. There is growing need therefore to consider interim solutions as well as the long-term objective.”

AAT is finding growing demand among adaptations teams for stairclimbers, because of the equipment’s ability to safely deliver that temporary solution. Often, a stairclimber is already available in equipment stores, and just needs accessorising to address any individual safeguarding considerations. AAT’s latest development, the Universal Back, means every stairclimber can, with that one additional accessory, address most user needs in terms of support.

Each stairclimber can be re-issued multiple times, thus empowering the optimum number of people to continue to live with minimal risk in their own homes and optimising best value.