Mandy Quilliam talks about her experience of being stuck in the living room of her two-storey house while she waits to move into her Government-allocated disability-friendly bungalow
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00:00I'm waiting for an adapted bungalow. The bungalow up at Royal Park is already made.
00:05All they're waiting for is to build me an extension and this has been going on
00:10since when the commissioners handed it over to the government in October 23 and
00:17I keep on getting given different dates and I've asked previously, can I tell
00:22my family now? You know, tell my kids and everything. Yeah, yeah, you can tell your
00:25family, tell them all, like they're getting excited, we're gonna have a date,
00:29gonna be able to have a family life, like as you can see it's a two bedroom, a two
00:35seat sofa, sorry, and I live in this in this living room and my son's always in
00:43his room, he's nearly 16, I've got a 10 year old and we can't have family time
00:48really and when I go into this bungalow it's gonna be a lot easier because I'm
00:53gonna have the racks going up there, you know, on the ceiling so I can get
00:58plonked on the sofa, plonked on my wheelchair, I'll always have the sling
01:01underneath me so it's just a matter of putting it on like you do that hoist
01:06there and that's all it is, it's all about having family time and also my son
01:14and my partner used to carry me up, upstairs for a shower but then my
01:21spasms got worse and they were like nearly falling down the stairs and
01:25everything so it wasn't safe, I couldn't have a stair lift put in here because my
01:30spasms would make me fall off underneath the belt, I tried one in somebody else's
01:35house and it just didn't work at all, so I said I can't have that and then the
01:42commissioners got it all planned out, got me got me plans, they went
01:47through everything with me, chose my kitchen, the lot, everything was going well. It's been
01:51prolonged all the time and my kids are getting fed up of here and they're like
01:57it's probably gonna be next year when we get this bungalow, I'm like well yeah it
02:02is and my daughter has friends up there already as well that are looking forward
02:06to going up there and they can have sleepovers because obviously with me in
02:09this situation I can't let the kids have sleepovers because I'm not able but if
02:15I'm on my wheelchair and everything and it's easier for me to go to bed and
02:19everything, it's gonna make life so much easier and it's like basically like as
02:25you can see my windowsill, this is the place where I have my own stuff, I've got
02:31nowhere that I can place my own stuff, I've got clothes and those drawers
02:37behind and they're like the only things I wear, the majority of the time I wear
02:42pyjamas as it is unless I've got hospital appointments, I've got to go
02:47somewhere. Life would just be so much easier if we had the bungalow, we'd have
02:53our family life back.