As a nurse with over 20 years’ experience, predominantly in mental health, disability and aged care, Jane Thomasson was one of thousands of nurses who struggled daily to dress patients and residents in a manner which didn’t cause harm to frail or disabled people. Trained in Queensland and having worked throughout Australia and the UK, Thomasson is now resident in Tasmania and has set out on a brand new venture, identifying a significant gap in the market: creating suitable clothing for dependent patients. “When you are dressing people in different stages of different illnesses, you really can struggle,” Thomasson says. “Elderly skin is thin and tears easily, so when you are trying to drag garments on, it often causes skin tears.” To avoid this problem, many patients choose to wear greatly oversized clothing or hospital gowns. Three years ago, Thomasson started looking for a better option. She spent hours online looking for disability clothing, which led her to a number of websites in the US, Canada, the UK and Germany, where she found a type of apparel called adaptive clothing. These garments have been used internationally for many years – one of the larger companies has been in business for 81 – but having searched high and low, she could find no similar offering here in Australia. “I found a couple but they seemed very small and you really had to search for them. I looked into it and I had the challenge of knowing what I wanted – a designer range for Australian elderly and disabled people.” So she decided to do it herself. In 2010, she launched Errine, a company specifically founded to design adaptive clothing for the Australian market. She found an agent in Sydney who helped with the designs and made up samples, but surprisingly could not source a local manufacturer willing to do small quantities, so is now having them manufactured overseas. While she is keen to manufacture here in Australia, one benefit of manufacturing offshore is that prices are kept to a minimum. Thomasson is now trying to get assistance from the government to have the garments exempted from GST. She plans to expand the range from predominantly clothing for elderly people to include designing for younger people with disabilities, and as such applied to the ATO for a GST exemption. As she found out, however, this doesn’t yet exist. “They said they had never heard of disability clothing so it has to fall under normal clothing. I asked how to change that and they said it had to be put through Parliament.” Thomasson has the good fortune of having for her local member of Parliament the independent Andrew Wilkie, who is very firmly behind the push and is liaising with the Treasurer, Wayne Swan. She has also contacted the office of Bill Shorten, now the assistant treasurer and minister for financial services who made a very good name for himself when he was disability services minister. Errine offers a range of affordable clothing specifically designed for frail elderly and disabled people. Starting from $29.95 for a nightdress, the range includes adaptive night and day wear for men and women, with plans to extend this to younger markets. The designs are specifically constructed with wearers in mind: soft fabrics and soft satin labels have been used to avoid skin irritation and tears, with closures placed where they cannot cause irritation and pressure sores. “They all have unique features built into the clothing,” she says. “For example, if you are looking at top garments like a nightdress or a blouse, they go on frontwards like a hospital gown, but the blouse will have non-functioning buttons down the front so it looks like a normal blouse. It doesn’t look any different but you don’t have to rotate the shoulders, you don’t have to bend the arms, you don’t have to raise their arms or squeeze them into awkward positions.” She has also considered what to do about closures and fit when wearers spend a lot of time sitting down or lying prone. “It’s like the princess and the pea,” she says of the discomfort caused by buttons and zips digging into delicate skin. “With all of the closures, there are press studs on the blouses and the adaptive nighties and men’s tops. They are positioned so that when a person lies down or leans back they aren’t going to be lying or leaning on these buttons, so it’s not going to cause any pressure or aggravation to the skin.” While Thomasson is lobbying the government for a GST exemption, she is also in discussions with another small clothing supplier in Queensland, looking to merge the two businesses. She also has long-term plans to open a retail outlet and to franchise her business, expanding the range to cover the needs of children with disabilities. The garments are all available online and both Thomasson and her distributor in Victoria make visits to aged care facilities to show the range. “When you look at adaptive garments, it is not just for elderly people in nursing homes – you have palliative care, people who are in general hospitals who have bypass surgery – you can’t move them to dress them without causing them a great deal of pain. People who have had hip replacements – all sorts. There is a solution out there but people just have to know it exists.”
