It's been a bit of a rollercoaster year both campaigning wise and personally so I thought as it's the end of the year that I'd share some of my successes as well as the targets I have planned for the year ahead. At the start of the year I made clear that it was my intention to target the NHS. It is absolutely appalling that in this day and age people with disabilities have no toilet facilities in the very hospitals and clinics that they attend. I targetted the Department of Health, NHS England and I emailed just less than 400 NHS hospital trusts and Clinical Commissioning Groups in England. I had mixed responses. I asked the various Government & NHS Departments to make Changing Place toilet facilities compulsory in hospitals and healthcare settings. The Department of Health told me to email the NHS trusts & NHS England. NHS England told me to email the Department of Health and NHS Improvements. NHS Improvements told me it was nothing to do with them contact NHS England. I'm now at a point with NHS England that they will hold my emails on record but will no longer respond to them... Thankfully though in some areas sanity prevailed. Changing Place toilet facilities are now in the plans at Silverpoint GP centre in Enfield, The Christie Hospital in Manchester and Bradford Royal Infirmary, while others trusts are looking at ways to get funding or finding a way of incorporating a Changing Place toilet facility in their existing buildings. NHS Property Services (who take care of 10% of the NHS estate in England) came out in support of my campaign and are advocating for Changing Place facilities and the Department of Health updated their Health Building Notes (HBN 00-02) to include Changing Place facilities and so they should be included in hospitals and clinics as they are built or renovated, as “best practice”. One of my challenges for the New Year is to contact the Trusts who didn't respond to me in the first instance and to also to start contacting those responsible for hospitals in the rest of the UK. A really high point of the year was when my local council announced that it would spend £100,000 on providing 10 new Changing Places facilities in the area, following a promise that they'd made in 2015, although they have gone above and beyond the initial promise and I use them as a standard for others to achieve. In 2015 I emailed most of the councils in Great Britain and around 50 told me that they would encourage developers to include Changing Place facilities. Many councils did not respond to my email. I will also be targetting them in the New Year. Another high point was appearing on Channel 4's No Go Britain series. Spreading awareness of the need for Changing Place facilities is key to making a difference. Many families out there who NEED these facilities are not aware of the campaign, and neither often are those with the power to bring about change. The louder we can shout therefore the more likely we are to be heard... I have also joined forces with a number of other campaigners. We have realised that together we are stronger. Please follow our efforts by liking the My Changing Place Facebook page. If you would like to contribute to my campaign, then please do any or all of the following. Email your MP, using the template in the link. If you've had problems accessing Changing Place facilities in your local NHS setting then please make a written complaint. If you go to a tourist attraction and they don't have a facility, then email or write to them and let them know that it was a problem with your day out. If you do nothing else then please share this petition along and ask people to sign as I will continue to take your voices with me in the emails that I send. Happy New Year x Lorna