Plans to create a wheelchair-friendly play park in Perth have taken a step forward, with designs for how it might look being drawn up.
Katherine McKay and Claire Wilkie from Maisie Moo’s Magical Moments have spent the past year trying to raise thousands of pounds to create a wheelchair-accessible play park on the North Inch.
They were inspired by Claire’s daughter Maisie, who has cerebral palsy and has limited mobility, restricting her from using most parks in the area.
However, the pair have now managed to raise an impressive £40,000 and have drawn up designs on what the park will look like.
Katherine said she hopes the play park will be open as soon as next Easter.
She said: “We have been working with a landscape architect at the council to revise our original plans.
“We are absolutely delighted to now have some designs in place and things are starting to become a reality.
“Hopefully we will be getting funding from a charity for a wheelchair swing, and we will have a wheelchair trampoline and a wheelspin roundabout.
“We are also wanting to put in wheelchair-accessible picnic benches - there is nothing there at the moment bench-wise, so a couple of those will be needed.”
However, Katherine and Claire do not want to stop there. They want to continue raising even more money to eventually add a wheelchair-friendly slide and see-saw, a sensory bridge and a sensory garden.
The total cost of all this would be £117,000.
However, as Maisie Moo’s Magical Moments is not a registered charity, there are a lot of potential funding avenues not open to them.
Katherine continued: “We got £10,000 from the council’s community investment fund earlier this year and the community greenspace team is also contributing £10,000.
“Local businesses have been absolutely fantastic and the community in general has been holding fundraising events. The total for the park so far is £40,000 but it will cost £117,000 for everything we want to do.
“But the project has come on leaps and bounds in the last couple of months, and we are really pleased with that. We need to keep fundraising because this will be fantastic for all kids with disabilities.”
She added: “We have the equality act in place, but a lot of public bodies don’t have the money to do what they want to do.
“Sometimes there is only one token piece of equipment in a park, but that doesn’t provide a fulfilling play experience for children.
“Once this is completed there will be a full park, which will be rewarding for all children with disabilities.
“This will also help all children integrate together because although disabled children get a lot of support, it is still very segregated because their education is so specialised.”
The pair are hoping to secure all the funding they need by October, and have work to build the park in place by Easter 2020.
