A Cowichan Valley man who provides wheelchair accessible transportation says recent news about a Woss man given a taxi ride to an appointment in Victoria shows the complexities behind the transportation assistance offered by Island Health.
The story was originally reported by CHEK TV in Victoria and the man said he believed taking a taxi, rather than having milage reimbursed to a volunteer driver was ridiculous.
Rob Darwin uses a wheelchair and founded This Rides 4 U a little more than three years ago to help people who face similar barriers. His business provides rides to and from medical appointments, as well as other services, and he says it is more complex than it may seem on the surface.
“It’s quite fulfilling to be able to provide a service that you know, basically these people, they experience barriers with their transportation,” he says.
Some of his clients make use of Island Health’s Travel Assistance Program, which he says helps him remove barriers and helps people get where they need to be.
“Island Health looks at providing a safe and a proper transportation service and sometimes they have to hire transportation providers, like myself, and nobody actually realizes how complex it is,” he says.
He says to transport people, there are many things required behind the scenes aside from driving passengers. This includes properly maintaining vehicles and having the required licensing and insurance.
“We can get uncle Bob or we can get a family member to go and transport somebody – is it a safe transportation? Is it something that may or may not, to the onlooker, be expensive or less expensive,” he says, adding there are many complexities to providing the service.
“I don’t think there is anything more that Island Health could even do. I think they are providing an absolutely stunning, wonderful service,” he says. “At the end of the day, a lot of people are not even aware that these things are provided to us.”
