What is the spica rental service?
When someone is recovering from surgery, injury or illness, having the right seating can be an important part of their recovery and rehabilitation.
Our Spica Rental Service provides the seating prescribed by the NHS clinical team and supports you and your family member throughout the time it is needed.
From delivery and fitting to ongoing support and collection, we’re here to help.
The Spica is designed specifically for children and young adults in hip spica casts (or other post-operative braces). The paediatric wheelchair rental:
• Accommodates cast width safely
• Supports both indoor and outdoor use
• Promotes comfort, positioning, and independence
Our seating specialists work closely with your occupational therapist or physiotherapist to deliver, set up, and adjust the chair – either in hospital or at home.
Contact the team
Is this right for me?
Every person is different, but wheelchair rental may be worth considering if:
Our short term wheelchair means your child can come home safely with the right support in place from day one. The wheelchair is provided for as long as it’s needed during recovery, helping maintain comfort and positioning while making it easier to get out of the house, return to school, and continue everyday routines during rehabilitation.
How does Spica wheelchair rental work?
We support safe, timely discharge through a straightforward prescription and Spica rental process, ensuring appropriate post-operative wheelchair provision is in place for a child’s return to home, school, and community life.
Minimum rental period: 3 weeks
1. submit a referral form
Once surgery is scheduled, complete a referral form.
Measurements must be confirmed by the day of surgery.
2. Receive your quote within 24 hours
If plans change, your quote can be withdrawn at no cost.
3. confirm your booking
Payment, completed referral form, and confirmed setup details are required.
4. Delivery and setup (3–5 working days post-surgery)
Once surgery has taken place, we’ll arrange delivery and full setup. A £300 fee applies for cancellations after order acknowledgement.
5. Collection or extension
We’ll arrange collection from home or hospital.
Rental can be extended at £95 per week.
Supporting recovery and rehabilitation
The purpose of the short term wheelchair is to support your family member’s clinical needs during their recovery or rehabilitation. Good seating can help with important aspects of everyday life, including:
Funding a Spica chair
We’re here throughout the rental
Recovery doesn’t always follow a straight line. Plans can change, discharge dates can move and your family member’s needs may change as they recover.
If you have a concern about the chair or how it is being used, please contact us. We’ll listen, provide appropriate support and, where a clinical review is needed, work with the clinical team responsible for your family member’s care.
You may notice changes in:
If something doesn’t seem right, tell us or tell the clinical team. We can make sure the right people are involved and that any clinical changes are considered appropriately.
We take time to get things right
When the chair arrives, our specialist team will help introduce it safely. We’ll make sure the prescribed seating configuration is correctly set up and will spend time with the person using the chair, their family and carers, to explain how it works.
We’ll help you understand:
We understand that using specialist seating can feel unfamiliar at first. We’ll take the time to listen, explain, and make sure you feel supported.
What happens at the end of the rental?
When the clinical team confirms that the seating episode has finished, we arrange collection from your home or hospital. We take care of its return, cleaning, inspection and quality assurance so it can be safely prepared for its next clinical use.
We do like to ask families to share their experience with us, including what difference the chair made and anything that could have been better.
Your feedback can tell us things that aren’t always visible in a clinical appointment and we use this learning to improve our service and contribute to our annual impact reporting. Where appropriate, relevant outcomes can also be shared with the clinical team.
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