"The Insider" - December 2023 - Flipbook - Page 5
AGENCY NEWS - CATTARAUGUS GRANT
NEW GRANT FUNDS PILOT PROGRAM FOR “RAIZER LIFT CHAIRS”
We are pleased to announce that Intandem recently received a grant from the F.T. and
Anna C. Manley Memorial Fun for over $17,000 to purchase three “Raizer Liftup” mobile
lifting chairs.
Ask any Direct-Support Professional, and they’ll tell you that one of the ongoing
challenges of supporting people with developmental disabilities is their propensity toward
experiencing issues with mobility and balance. This can cause numerous falls on a regular
basis. The challenge of assisting individuals who have fallen is amplified by the new reality
that most Intandem residents must stay in-residence throughout each day due to COVID19 regulations. Without assistance from either medical equipment or emergency
personnel, a fall at home may be impossible for residential staff to remedy on their own.
Thus, emergency calls for ambulance personnel to help someone up from a fall are fairly
regular. Subsequently, residential staff run the risk of back injuries and other muscular
ailments from trying to raise an individual who has fallen. In some cases, this can lead to
chronic pain and loss of work time.
A solution to this problem - a professionally proven electric lift chair – has now been on
the market long enough to earn an excellent reputation for assisting people with falls, with
the advantage of being useable by just one attendant and without muscle or back strain.
Many agencies like Intandem have reported that the use of this lift chair has allowed
individuals to have a better quality of life, experience fewer emergency calls, and it has
reduced employee injuries.
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While there are multiple versions of lifting chairs, the one with the strongest reputation for
reliability, strength, ease of use, and positive reviews is the Raizer LiftUp Mobile Lifting
Chair. The cost for one chair is close to $6,000, and one is not enough to solve the
agency’s problem; so the Intandem development office has been researching grant
opportunities to begin procuring lift chairs for the residential and day programs.
Because the Manley Memorial Fund only supports projects in Cattaraugus and Allegany
counties, we will place these new chairs in some of our Cattaraugus-County locations as a
pilot project. Assuming they work as well as we’ve been told, we will look to add
additional locations in Niagara County soon.
The Manley Memorial Fund has been a regular supporter of Intandem for many years. We
are very grateful for their generosity and commitment to helping our agency and the
people we support.
Pictured to the side is
the Razor Liftup chair
that we will be able to
place in a few of our
Cattaraugus locations
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