Disability charity hunts space for second-hand equipment hub

Tuesday 24 January 2023

A local disability charity is appealing to islanders to help it find a space for it to launch a new second-hand equipment hub in three months' time.

Enable Jersey - Bailiwick Express and Connect Magazine's partner charity in 2022 - is one of 14 charities to have recently benefitted from the latest round of funding from the Jersey Community Foundation.

With its £40,000, the charity hopes to set up a hub where islanders will be able to access access safe, reliable second-hand care equipment.

Enable CEO Sean Pontin said: “Over the last couple of years we’ve seen various adverts for people who’ve got equipment they no longer need, and then the next day you see an advert from someone who says they need something… so we had the idea to connect the two together.”

The planned hub will provide anything from electric scooters and wheelchairs, to walking devices, beds and hoists. All of this equipment will be safely repurposed by Enable, and made available to anyone who may need it as soon as possible.

Pictured: Sean Pontin, CEO of Enable Jersey.  

Sean added: “It's all about helping people to react quickly…imagine someone telling you you can’t use your legs for two weeks while you get your shoes fixed. It’s not great.” 

Sean said he anticipates a great deal of demand for this service, given that care equipment can be "very expensive" and sometimes "hard to come by" as it's not always funded by Government.

Sean gave the example of a custom electric wheelchair that could cost anywhere between £5,000 to £10,000.

Moreover, equipment in good condition that may be worth thousands of pounds can sometimes be thrown out or discarded well before it has reached the end of its working life.

“Very sadly, a lot of care equipment isn’t worn out… There’s a lot of care equipment that’s got a lot of use left, and people don’t know what to do with it," Sean explained.

"It’s out there somewhere so we thought we would connect the dots and create something that allows some equipment that would go in a landfill, to have some use.” 

So far, the response to Enable's initiative has been overwhelming and Enable has received countless offers from people offering up their equipment. However, before they can start rolling out their initiative, they need to find somewhere to store everything they collect. 

Pictured: An electric wheelchair can cost between £5,000 and £10,000. 

"Storage is going be our biggest and first challenge," Sean said. That’s our call to the community: is there storage out there? Have people got storage that’s not being used, that we could use even in the short term, or that would make a great base in the long term?… This really is a community project and we need people’s help with it.” 

Such is the volume of offers received so far, that Sean added: “We are going to need the airport if we’re not careful.” 

As well as helping islanders access second hand equipment, Enable have also been asked by the Jersey Community Foundation to administer some of their funds to help people secure funding for new equipment.

As such, islanders who may require financial support to purchase equipment, can contact Enable. Sean said: "We will be able to help them from start to finish... anything we can do to support people to live in their own community as normally as possible.” 

Sean hopes that the second-hand equipment hub will be open by April, but still requires support from the community to help track down some storage space.

GET IN TOUCH...

If you think you might be able to help in the search for short- and long-term storage space - or know someone who can - then contact Enable via email: info@enablejersey.org.