Tipperary Centre for Independent Living Ltd.

Overview  

Tipperary Centre for Independent Living main service is the provision of Personal Assistants to persons with significant physical disability. The personal assistant assists the disabled person in many ways. At present, over 30 physically disabled people are benefiting from this invaluable service.

Some disabled people  have been able to take up hobbies, commence training courses, return to school and take up employment. These are all opportunities, which these people would not have been able to take advantage of without personal assistants. Some examples of how Personal Assistants have made a considerable difference in people lives include:

Jim Casey and Minister for Disabilities
  • A quadriplegic running his typesetting business from home using the latest in assistive and information technology.
  • A number of children are now able to attend mainstream education rather than ‘special’ schools.
  • A number of people from varying age groups are now able to live in their own home rather than in nursing home or institution.
  • A man with Multiple Sclerosis is able to manage his own dairy farm

In a large rural, mainly isolated area, transport has been identified as one of the major concerns of disabled persons in Tipperary. In order to try and counteract this problem T.C.I.L. has set up Tipperary Accessible Transport. This service is intended to provide a self-directed accessible service for disabled people who up to its introduction were prisoners in their own homes due to the lack of wheelchair accessible transport.

The bus travels throughout the country covering activities as simple as shopping, holidays (to be taken for the first time in years) and going to numerous GAA matches.

Tipperary Centre for Independent Living is currently establishing a computer training facility and information advice Centre. We see this as the way forward for the advancement of people with disabilities in Tipperary, as many of the existing training facilities at present are, in general, non-accessible and lack assistive technology such as the voice activated software and adapted keyboards that are needed for some disabled people.

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