Bob Raitt: My name is Bob Raitt. I’ve lived in Aberdeen all my life. I worked in the healthcare field and I retired about three years ago due to ill health.
Lesley Raitt: The house that we were in, we were very happy there. We liked it. We liked our neighbours and everything, but unfortunately when Bob’s condition started to go downhill the house was no longer of any use.
Bob: I lived upstairs for about fourteen months. Basically between our bedroom and the five or six steps to the bathroom and back, you know. That was how I existed for twelve to fourteen months.
Lesley: You felt as if you were becoming isolated actually because you couldn’t get out.
Bob: It was kind of me having to accept that, yes, it’s wheelchair, it’s hoist, this is what I’m going to need, this is what my wife’s going to need to help to care for me.
Lesley: The house just became somewhere where we had refuge really. It was somewhere to eat and sleep but you couldn’t really regard it as a home.
Kirsty La Grange: My name’s Kirsty La Grange. I’m 27 and I’ve got spina bifida with panplegia.
Berna La Grange: I moved here because I’m not only Kirsty’s mum but I’m also her carer and we come as a package.
Kirsty: I lived in a council house out in the country near Peterhead and it was just a conventional house. My room was up the stairs so I had to crawl up and down the stairs every morning because the toilet was down the stairs. The kitchen was not adapted to me. We did have a shower and a ramp, but other than that, there was nothing adapted to my needs. Because it was in the country I felt isolated because I, myself, couldn’t go anywhere without the help of my mum.
Bob: The good thing about this house is that it was built round my needs. You know, Margaret Blackwood came to us, and my occupational therapist and said ‘What do you need?’ I said, ‘Well we need a ceiling hoist, we need the wide doors.’ Obviously we’re all on one floor, that’s a plus. The rooms are perfect size for wheelchair access, for turning round, and the doors are fine, and wide. Any place in the flat you can go up and get outside and you can fit in the living room to watch the television.
Lesley: Even having the intercom here is fine as well, because it means that I can go out, and I know if someone’s coming to visit, he can let them in.
Bob: It’s psychological. It’s knowing that, I’m not even through in the bedroom, I’m just through the house, you know, I can just come through in the wheelchair and we can go out together.
Lesley: This is a home, you know, we can use all the rooms, Bob can get around it, he can have a bath. He can go through to the kitchen and put on the kettle, and just do normal things that he hadn’t been able to do for such a long time.
Kirsty: Me becoming more independent has allowed my mum more independence.
Berna: I can see Kirsty being able to develop and making her own decisions about what she’s going to do during any given day, where before everything depended on me.
Kirsty: I can get out and I can go to the shops, and the fact that everythings tailored to me, I can make meals and make myself a drink.
Berna: We share the cooking and we share washing dishes. Kirsty can go out into the car without me doing anything, and it’s safe.
Kirsty: I’m finding it very ‘me-friendly,’ for want of a better description.
Berna: She came first all the time, and rightly so. But now it’s an equal relationship.
Bob: That house is designed for Bob Raitt. You know, your needs have been put in the centre and that thing has been built around it, so it’s a terrific thing.
Lesley: It’s like regaining a lot of what we had lost, and giving more normality back to our lives again.
Bob: This is the book, the DVD, the video and the t-shirt. This is everything here, you know, and we can live a normal life. However things go, we can live it here.
Kirsty: Moving here, with everything on my level, has allowed me to become more independent.
Berna: We’re just happy, it’s a new life; we’re having a new experience! It’s great!
Bob: This is darkness to light basically. This is chalk and cheese. It’s just totally liberated us and created so many opportunities for us, with choices and with the potential, which we haven’t quite tapped into yet. It’s pretty amazing here.
Lesley: Thanks to Margaret Blackwood, I think it’s great that our house is like this, and hopefully there’s going to be more of them for other people in similar situations, because it’s not until you’re in that situation that you realise how important it is to have a home that suits your needs, and it’s not something you think about really but it can help any of us.
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