Invacare Action Junior 3 – Manual Wheelchair

Wheelchair Description:
Simple manual children’s wheelchair with self propel wheels and small front castors. It can be folded to make it narrower in width. It has a canvas seat, with cushion insert and canvas back panel, armrests, skirt guards, a lap belt and chest harness. There are anti-tip bars at the back and the small front castors are on quite wide outriggers to make the chair stable. It has swing away and removable footrests. The mainframe is a cheerful orange colour, although many of the fixings are basic metal or black.

Source of Wheelchair:
NHS Wheelchair Services

Diagnosis:
Rare Genetic Condition, Resulting In Profound Learning Disability, Sensory Processing & Hypermobility/Hypotonia

Personal Opinion:
After my daughter outgrew her specialist buggy (at about the age of 6) this was the 3rd wheelchair that we tried, which was most appropriate for her.

My daughter has learning disabilities, so although it has self propel wheels, we use it as an assisted push transit chair. You can get smaller transit wheels, but we found those to be very hard and made the chair very bumpy/rattly over uneven ground; it also made the chair less manoeuvrable. The larger wheels have more natural shock absorption and allow the chair to pivot in a small space. Although the self-propel wheels on this chair are not great for someone who does a lot of self-propelling, as they are set quite far towards the back of the chair. Thankfully this is ideal for us, as we have the benefit of the larger wheels without my daughter playing with the tyres or getting her fingers trapped, as she loves sensory materials!

Wheelchair Services added the chest harness for us, so to fold the chair we have to unscrew a brace across the back of the chair. We could have opted to have a solid back with a chest harness attached, but in that case, the back would have to be lifted off in order to fold the chair. We have found it easy to hang a small backpack or wheelchair tidy to the back handles without making the chair unstable. We have also added some of our own accessories.

The Action Jnr has a selection of decorated spoke guards that you can choose from, however, we asked for the plain clear plastic ones so we decorate them ourselves with easily removable wall and window stickers. At the moment my daughter has superhero wall decorations from Dunelm Mill and she previously had snowflake window decorations. We have also replaced the front castors with LED castors from Spinnerz, which came in 2 sizes and were easy to fit. They light up with the motion of the wheels turning, so they are great fun and a real talking point, especially in the winter in the darker afternoons.

Although this is a fairly simple chair that could be more stylish, it is not ideal for those who self propel. That being said, it suits my daughter’s requirements very well so I have given it 4 stars.