Fed up with boys in women's changing rooms at pool

[Clary]

Not really AIBU, more may I rant please?

Actually wrote longer post then seem to have lost it, but wanted to moan about number of big lads I have spotted lately in women's changing rooms at pool. Rule is 8yo and over go in correct sex room.

I tend to say nothing having been verbally attacked before, and also told I W A bit U; but today I did query it with a woman and was told such nonsense as "they won't let them go in the men's as they are too young" (they were 9 and 10) and "nobody uses the men's anyway" (??!!).

Told the staff and they said they would tell the women when she came out; but really, why do people think their 10yo boy must change in the women's? What 10yo boywants to anyway? I am not mad about him standing there as I get changed and if I were a 14yo girl I would probably be very unhappy.

The woman today said "well, all the mums will be washing their kids after the swim" eh?? My 8yo can be a bit hopeless but even he can manage a reasonable shower and dress deal. What is the matter with people?

And breathe. Vent over, thanks for listening

forever- having someone lead my son through just wouldn't be workable, he's too difficult to control to have a random person take him through, and if he damaged said person or himself (he runs off) or had a sit down refusing to move moment there would be the potential for liability issues. All the people who care for my son are either family or insured iyswim, I could quite understand a pool who refused that option (and I wouldn't see it as a workable solution). It would work for some, but not the majority of kids/adults with SLD's or severe autism (who most need the mixed changing).

No it's not your fault loudlass. An email reminding the council of their duties under the DDA might work? They complained about lost revenue with our disabled swimming club as well but the leaders growled about the DDA and they backed down.

Saintly: I have been thinking about how at my benches-only pool (I repeat, cubicles are not an option) it would be possible for the adult female carer of a male SN user (of any age) to help him in the male changing area without offending the privacy of male users.

Call the user U and the carer C. U and C arrive at the front desk and C announces the situation. A male member of staff has to be found to go into the area and see if there is anybody there. There probably is. He has to station somebody at the pool-end of the area to see that nobody else comes in, and the receptionist has to tell other men not to go in. When all the men already in are out, or at least decent, U and C can go into the pool.

When they are finished the reverse process will apply; the male who kicks it off is probably the lifeguard on duty so everyone has to leave the pool while he checks out the changing room, warns the receptionist (again) and remains at the pool-end of the area until C has left ? let?s hope she yells ?All clear? as she goes. In the meantime the swimmers who were in the pool are shivering on the side; the women at least can give up and change but not so the men. And male users ? whose subs keep the club in being ? are waiting at the reception seeing their time in the pool eroded, quite possibly seeing their own children getting bored and fractious at not being able to have the swim they came for.

If you think the DDA requires that you don?t know the difference between a reasonable adjustment and a gross imposition.

Andrew that wouldn't necessarily work anyway because it would involve the person with learning disabilities having to wait to enter the changing room. Many with LD's wouldn't be able to do that.

This seems to suggest that at least one unisex changing area should be provided www.swimming.org/assets/uploads/library/Disability_Provision.pdf

The DDA is actually a very strong law. Yes it says adjustments should be reasonable, but the health club has to justify why an adjustment is unreasonable. I think they would be very hard pushed to argue that absolutely nothing could be done to facilitate a mixed changing area for a pwld's and their carer.

Of course it's quite possible that someone with LD's would ever want to join your health club. It doesn't matter in a sense that something is non DDA compliant if it's never challenged (although still illegal as providers of services are meant to anticipate potential needs). Maybe your health club should have an accessibility audit?

This is very interesting reading. Jump to the conclusion if you can't be bothered to read the whole thing

www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies/archiveuk/lerpiniere/media_136223_en.pdf

The DDA of course is now even tougher (2005)

My friend has a 7 year old DS and is "terrified" about him being abducted in the mens changing room. I think she is mad and I said my DS (only 5) would go in with him, safety in numbers. She also has a 6 year old DS so its not even as if he'd be in there alone. My DD is the same age and changes on her own if she goes with DH. She doesn't want to go into the mens changing room and I don't blame her!

Neither do I-there is no way that I would have gone into the male changing room aged 7yrs.
This is your friend's problem and as an adult she needs to deal with it. She has to tell her DS what to do if he isn't happy, but I would imagine that at the time he goes swimming it is very unlikely that he would be alone in a changing room. They need to learn to risk assess.
Many adults seem quite incapable of risk assessment - the chance of a car accident when you are out with your DC is quite high and yet people don't think twice about taking them off in a car. The chances of a problem with a man in a changing room is very, very low and yet the fear is out of all proportion.
If the DC is is an car about to crash, there is nothing they can do- but if in a changing room they can scream very loudly. No man is going to risk it-there isn't an outside door-they have to get out through the public area.
Your friend will have to do it in the end-and when he gets to 11yrs she won't be any happier.

Actually I'm out of date aren't I? The Equality Act (2010) is even tougher?

300 plus pages on the DDA(2005) here. It talks about private clubs as well as public building.

www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_rights_of_access.pdf

from page 84:" The changing facilities in a women-only gym are
located in a room that is only accessible by
stairs. The service provider suggests to disabled
users of the gym with mobility impairments that
they can change in a corner of the gym itself.
This is unlikely to be a reasonable alternative
method of making the service available, since it
may significantly infringe upon their dignity."

In other words the gym will have to come up with something else.

And from page 127:

"However, refusing service to a disabled person is
only justifiable if other people would be effectively
prevented from using the service at all unless the
service provider treated the disabled person less
favourably than other people. It is not enough that
those other people would be inconvenienced or
delayed."

Interesting reading huh?

right back to work:

The link again as I cocked it up before

www.equalityhumanrights.com/uploaded_files/code_of_practice_rights_of_access.pdf

Will be useful to anyone wanting to challenge lack of access to sports facilities.

Not for the first time I have to say that the codes although they can be referred to in court are not law and do not have the force of law. The law does not require that which is physically impossible - such as creating a unisex area where there just is nowhere to put it - and while I agree that mere delay or inconvenience to others may be acceptable you yourself agree that my method (which would cause delay and inconvenience) would not work because people with LD would have to wait. And for the reasons I have set out ad nauseam that delay is unavoidable because to allow a woman to enter the male changing area while men are using it who are likely to be in a state of undress is not reasonable. You will see that if you imagine an adult man entering the women's changing area while the women are using it.

The pool may have been badly designed but that is not the issue.

The code is an interpretation of the the law- which actually does have to obeyed. Of course test cases will alter codes of practice but it's a rather more user friendly version discovering what you are meant to do rather than reading the original Act. Following the code does perhaps reduce your chances of ending up a test case? The code does highlight areas which are ambiguous.

I think it would actually be unreasonable for a service to expect a learning disabled female to change in front of men anyway (see the example about the female only gym) but I doubt very much that if challenged the service would be able to argue that there was no possible readjustment that could be made that would allow the disabled person swim. As I said they probably never will be challenged (your club hardly sounds welcoming to those with severe disabilities)

Luckily newly built pools have to be designed to be DDA compliant (including unisex changing) so this will presumably soon become a thing of the past.

There was a case last year - I am trying to track it down and will post a link - in which a woman who claimed that her dog was her family and essential to her mental health went to live in a block of flats where by contract dogs were forbidden. The dog barked and barked, other residents complained, and in the end the landlords claimed possession; and she pleaded the DDA.

She lost, because the landlords could not be called upon by way of reasonable adjustment to break their contracts with the other residents that the block would be dog-free. This is rather similar - I am entitled to expect the male changing room to be male only while I am using it for the purpose for which it is intended. The DDA does not wipe out the rights of other people and nor should it.

As for my club: while DW was on sticks following her knee operations she was given every help - except allowing me to help her change which she did not ask for, which i would not want, and which they would have had no business agreeing to!

Here it is:

www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2010/265.html

Not identical, no two cases ever are, but para 34 os about the legitimate interests of others - bang on here.

It's not similar Andrew because no-one is insisting on using opposite sex changing rooms- as aready explained if suggested as a solution by the pool it would not be seen as something the person with the disability should accept. (why in the world do you imagine a vulnerable learning disabled woman woukd want to get changed with a bunch of men? Do you really think that you woukd be the vuknerable party in that situation?

My point is that if a pool were to argue that there was no possible change to policy or procedure that could be made to allow those with disabilities needing carers (but no special equipment such as changing tables or hoists which incur a cost) then they would be on shaky ground.

Of course many businesses are not DDA compliant. Maybe yours is, maybe it does actually have a policy in place? If it isn't maybe it will never be challenged anyway.

saintly that's strange as when we were talking about communal changing rooms right at the beginning, you said that you often changed in front of 55yo men with learning disabilities and it wasn't a problem, and you would want to take your son in with you however old he was.

on reasonable adjustments, maybe it is similar to the tube.

In pools which were built decades ago and have severlely limited space (two changing rooms which are communal any tiny, one small toilet for each sex places) and there is no room anywhere at all for a cubicle, there is no reaonble solution, and if it were made illegal for there not to be one then the pool has to close.

Same as the tube - many of the stations are such that it is just not possible to include access for wheelchairs and there's nothing that can be done about that. And they aren't going to close 2/3 of the tube stations in london as that would not be right either.

These rules are not in place to close down facilities which are old and cramped.

The thing about the tube is that it is part of London Transport, so they cam compensate by making very nearly all the buses wheelchair accessible, which means they're covered.
Similarly an LA could presumably compensate for one pool that is not retro-fittable by making sure that there is other provision elsewhere which is fully accessible (obviously this is more likely to be reasonable in a small London borough than, say, Northumbria). Or am I wrong?

Where do they get the money from to build more pools though?

If they have that kind of money then I think they do tend to build something bigger and better and get rid of the older facilities (although there are always people upset as it usually seems to go 1 new flashy thing for 5 older ones).

In London though that approach isn't really possible as there isn't any spare land for newer, better facilities, so the old small ones stay.

Or you mean that where there is another local pool that has room to put cubicles in then they do it? I'm sure they do that already wherever they can, it is a legal requirement after all + the councils are public service providers with written commitment to equal opportunities.

Saintly If the user and the carer are of opposite gender one of them is going to be in the "wrong" changing room. Which do you think it should be?

I say neither and if there is no room for cubicles or a third changing area then it is like an old tube station, or my favourite Indian restaurant which occupies premises at the bottom of a flight of steep stairs in a building with no lift.

DilysPrice what SardineQueen said - and even if a London borough has the money it cannot magic up a site. And of course a one-pool club cannot turn itself into a two-pool club. There is too much Abracadabra about in all this discussion.

Sardine - I said that we shared changing rooms with cubicles with men with ld's without anyone keeling over in shock (also said we had no choice if we couldn't cope with that then my son woukdn't be able to swim at all. If you think it so bad for you weird you find it acceptable for pwld's but still). I've also said (repeatedly) that I have no particular wish to change my son in front of teenage girls as he gets enough ridicule from that group when out and about minding his own business.

Andrew - they could intoduce the (less than ideal) solution my pool has and have specialist disabled sessions with mixed changing. If I requested that and it was refused and no other alternative was offered they may find they had failed to make reasonable adjustments. Certainly our pool has decided that the DDA means they cannot remove the sessions - despite lost revenue.

You do understand that the equality act and DDA are powerful pieces of legislation don't you? And that just saying 'can't do it guv too difficult to accommodate these disableds' is not actually a defence. ESPECIALLY for severe learning disabilities where expensive specialist equipment is not needed and all access takes is a change in policies and procedures.

Bloody hell I frequently think that the social model of disability is a pile of bollocks ( or at least simplistic) but you lot in here are doing a good demonstration of it. You are also demonstrating how necessary legislation such as the DDA and equality act are.

loudlass .I would presume there is a reason or that a child is not as old as they look to be and even dd age 8 understnds that tere may be a dam good reason why a older boy is getting changed in the ladies accompied by mum/carer

Oh and Andrew is right a lot of private clubs do not have wheelchair access .A shower with no bench yeah and how the feck am i meant to use the dam shower without getting my wheelchair soaked

Glad that some people understand that DS2 is in with me because he needs my help. Wish everyone could be that understanding.