TOILETS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTRES

The curious thing about accessibility in early childhood centres.

A critical part of providing a level of accessibility to any building is designing sanitary facilities that can accommodate the needs of people with varying abilities.

Publicly accessible buildings designed for mainly adult occupants, or a broader age range, have long been routinely required to provide an accessible sanitary facility to accommodate the needs of people who use a wheeled form of mobility such as a manual or powered wheelchair, and in some instances a motorized scooter. This is generally accompanied by cubicles for people with ambulant disabilities which provide a higher toilet seat, some additional circulation as well as grabrails to assist a cohort of people who be unsteady or use a walking aid such as a single point stick, crutches or wheeled walker.

These are routinely designed to a Standard that reflects the anthropometrics of adults.

It has been our experience that almost all early years facilities such as maternal health centres, kindergartens and child care centres do not provide equivalent facilities for the children that will use these buildings. Children’s facilities in these types of buildings generally include a series of standard sized cubicles with a junior toilet pan. The rooms containing the cubicles are also often not designed to accommodate the circulation needs of wheeled mobility aid users.

The Building Code of Australia (BCA) has long espoused and codified the need to provide people with disabilities safe, equitable and dignified access to our public buildings. It’s a curious omission that the industry does not extend this to children with disabilities.

In reviewing the BCA, the associated Guideline, and the Disability (Access to Premises – Buildings) Standard, it is apparent that no statement or requirement has been included to differentiate between adult and children’s facilities. So why don’t any of these buildings include these?
When challenged, project designers and building surveyors will commonly respond that their expectation is these children will be assisted in their use of the sanitary facility. This is clearly not safe for the children and their carers in that additional manual handling is likely required in relatively confined spaces. Nor is it equitable and dignified when they are not afforded access to toilets as their peers would.

So what would constitute an appropriate design response?

An equivalent arrangement to that currently offered to adults would see an accessible sanitary facility for children with disabilities at 50% of all banks of sanitary facilities to each storey of the facility. In addition to this, each bank would include a cubicle for children with ambulant disabilities. This would be a single unisex cubicle given that children’s facilities are not gendered in early childhood centres.

This then brings us to the anthropometric differences between young children and that contained in the BCA referenced Australian Standards. While imperfect and based on a narrow field study, the aging and now obsolescent Standard AS 1428.3, represents the broadest guidance currently available. It provides guidance for items such as pan, basin and handrail heights, circulation areas, as well as reach ranges associated to 3 to 6 1/2 years olds with disabilities. Adopting this guidance as far as practicable to the sanitaryware that is commercially available (e.g., junior pans are generally only available in two sizes) provides a methodology for producing more appropriate facilities.
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Some of the inferences and inclusions may comprise:

• Preserving the adult pan and basin circulation requirements in the accessible sanitary facility.
• Reducing the centerline of the pan from the internal corner.
• Providing a junior pan in the cubicle for ambulant children.
• Reducing the diameter of grabrails.
• Reducing reaching distances to grabrails.
• Adjusting the location of the toilet roll holder.
• Reducing the width of the cubicle for children with ambulant disabilities.
• Reducing the height of basins.
• Etc.

 
Please contact us if you would like assistance with the detailed design of these facilities. We are very motivated to see long needed improvement in this area.

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