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“They’re hideous, they make me feel old, they’re embarrassing, and they don’t go with my home or my outfits.”
Sheila was clear about her views on grab rails. Despite her age and mobility issues, she didn’t see herself as old and refused to have them in her house. Soon the decision was taken out of her hands. After a prolonged period in hospital, a condition of her coming home was that she would have them installed. She had no choice in what she was given and returned to a house full of “ugly, plastic” adaptations that left her feeling ashamed in her own home.
Sheila’s story is powerful because it speaks to the experience of so many older people. Thousands make the same choice as her, refusing to have what they see as ugly and clinical looking grab rails only to have a fall and then require them. Research shows that low-cost home adaptations can lead to a 26% reduction in falls that need medical treatment and savings of £500 million each year to the NHS and social care.
Those statistics and Sheila’s story were part of Laura’s pitch to a room full of housing CEOs. Laura was in a team of people from across the North of England who had taken on the social challenge of ageing with dignity on the first incubator I designed using what has become the Public Life model. Sheila had come to represent the thousands of older people they were designing a solution for. Twelve weeks in and they were standing on the stage at a major conference with senior leaders from across the housing sector presenting their idea to tackle an issue that had persisted to decades.
“Why can’t grab rails be attractive?”, Laura asked. It was such an obvious question that everyone in that room wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. It’s those simple insights that often take the most work to find, but are the basis of the best innovation. And that was the case with Laura and her team. It led them to create Invisible Creations, a business designing and manufacturing beautiful invisible adaptations – grab rails that are also hanging baskets, soap dishes, and toilet roll holders.
Despite having never done anything like this before, in three months they had gone from a blank sheet of paper to not only designing their new grab rails, but having prototypes built. They even got to show them that day to the Prime Minister who was so impressed that she organised a roundtable in No10 with leading experts in the field to help get these new products off the ground.
Five years later and Invisible Creations is a business with products in homes across the country. The grab rails that Laura and the team designed on the programme went on to win multiple awards. They have created more products since, with their latest line developed in partnership with the Royal College of Art. This month they announced that Invisible Creations are now being stocked in Europe’s largest home improvement retailer, B&Q.
Laura finished her speech back where she had started with Sheila. “She wants a better option, and she deserves it. And I want it for her because she's my gran.”
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