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Simple manual children’s wheelchair with self-propelled wheels and small front castors. It can be folded to make it narrower in width. It has a canvas seat with a cushion insert, a canvas back panel, armrests, skirt guards, a lap belt, and a chest harness. There are anti-tip bars at the back, and the small front castors are on quite wide outriggers to enhance stability. It has swing-away, removable footrests. The main frame is a cheerful orange colour, although many of the fixings are black.
After my daughter outgrew her specialist buggy (at about age 6), this was the third (and most suitable for her) wheelchair that we tried.
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 very hard and made the chair very bumpy and rattly over uneven ground. They also made the chair less manoeuvrable. The larger wheels offer better natural shock absorption and allow the chair to pivot more easily in a small space.
The self-propel wheels on this chair are not great for someone who will do a lot of self-propelling, as they are set quite far back on the chair. This is ideal for us as we have the benefit of the larger wheels without my daughter playing with the tyres (she loves sensory materials!) or getting her fingers trapped.
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 also have had a solid back with the chest harness attached as well (in that case, the back would be lifted off to fold the chair).
We found it easy to hang a small backpack or wheelchair bag on 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, but we asked for clear plastic ones that are easy to decorate ourselves with removable wall and window stickers. Currently, my daughter has superhero wall decorations from Dunelm, and she previously had snowflake window decorations.
We have also replaced the front castors with LED castors from Spinnerz. They are available in 2 sizes and were easy to fit. They light up with the motion of the wheels turning, making them fun and a real talking point, especially in winter during the darker afternoons.
Although this is a fairly simple chair, it could be more stylish, and is not ideal for those who self-propel, it suits my daughter’s requirements very well, so I have given it four stars.
