Posted By Zoe Barnett Hi everyone, here is yet another conundrum for which I'd really appreciate some help. One of the large secondary schools in my flock has been adapted to take boys with physical disabilities, and at present there are four such lads in various year groups. Paraid evacuation chairs have been installed for the use of these boys in the event of an emergency. However, now that the chairs are in place it turns out that only one of boys can use them. For the others, the evac chairs are the wrong height for easy transfer from their wheelchairs and one of the boys, who has very little control over his upper body, complains that the chair does not offer him suitable support. Staff at present are attempting to lift these boys bodily from their wheelchairs to the evac chairs, but this is an ergonomic disaster especially as two of the staff already have back problems. Of course, in the event of a real fire the need to evacuate overrides everything else and staff would take any necessary steps to ensure that the boys are got into the chairs somehow. My concern is, however, that for fire precautions to be adquate they need to be practised regularly, which exposes staff to unacceptable manual handling risks. (I should add that we investigated banana boards, drawsheets, etc but none of these work due to the height difference between the chairs, not to mention the fact that they'd need to be readily available in the event of an emergency.) My question (at last!) is this. Do colleagues know of any alternative evacuation equipment that can be used for the profoundly disabled? The Paraid chair is a fine piece of kit but just wrong for this application. I've seen a caterpillar style device that clips on to the wheelchair itself - but wouldn't you know it, I can only find US suppliers. Perhaps the best solution would be an evac chair that can be adjusted in height. If anyone knows of a solution to this dilemma I would be very grateful indeed to hear of it.