I've been in a whole pile of different baby changing and family rooms over the past nearly a year and whilst there are some which aren't great because the amenities are broken, there are a lot which aren't great from the start. Whether it's the fact it's a building which was built before people had babies - yes, that is a joke - or in the time when children were neither seen nor heard and mother's were just expected to stay at home with youngsters, or it's just bad planning, most of these rooms were not planned by the people who use them or were intended to use them, because otherwise they would have been designed with a lot more sense.
There's things like safety straps. The number of times I've seen changing mats with them or without them are probably pretty even and I get that, because if you have one, does it make you less vigilant about preventing falls because mentally you think that's what the strap is there for, but when babies get older or turn into toddlers then they get very wiggly, wriggly and darn right devious, which means they get a knack for getting out of such things and sometimes that is a lot quicker than you assume that they will. But without a strap you have absolutely no back up and if you have to cross the room to wash your hands or dry your hands, you either need to put the child on the floor (God, no), back in whatever they are being carried in (which if you are just carrying them, then good luck to you) or... risk it for the least length of time you can in order to wash your hands? (Obviously that's also not a good option.)
There is a debate over whether family rooms should include a toilet, because of potty training, but my issue with that is that it almost encourages abuse of the room when lines in other bathrooms are long, but I have genuinely seen (on social media) conversations where mum's say they will pee in the sink and encourage their kids to do the same if there's not a sink in there. Taking aside that that is gross from a drainage point of view, it's also gross in terms of leaving that for cleaners, because splashing is a thing. I also think having a toilet is important in case of reusable nappies, because you can flush the liners which have the worst of the nappy contents in, rather than having to either bin it (when you're not likely to carry nappy bags because they're plastic) or take it home in the nappy.
Sometimes it's as simple as the bin being miles away from the changing table, because who doesn't need a hike in the middle of a nappy change?, the dryer being the opposite side of the room to sink, no hand soap, the pedal on the bin not working or something else and it just makes life difficult. Add to that the fact that the doors never swing both ways and are rarely assisted doors, so entering or exiting is always a struggle, and some of the rooms are not big enough for even the smallest pram to be in. And then my biggest pet peeve, changing facilities are lumped in with a disabled access toilet.
If it were as simple as there were changing places toilets everywhere and the changing facilities were a part of that facility, so there was a bed or plinth or table or whatever big enough for all changing needs, I would slightly say fair enough, but it's not. Changing places bathrooms are few and far between. It's not even about ensuring disabled parents are able to access changing facilities because mats are most often mounted where it would be impossible for a non ambulatory wheelchair user to use them, with little or no support for ambulatory wheelchair users and still too low for "able" parents to be able to comfortable use them.
I'm not saying that every changing mat should be height adjustable (wouldn't that be amazing) or that everywhere should revamp every room to move sinks and toilets and changing mats to all be on wall or anything, but a shelf to put your bag down so you can get at supplies would be amazing - not every nappy bag is built to be used from a hook! - bins working and being in logical places and having somewhere safe to put baby down so you can actually wash your hands (getting Sudocrem out from under long nails is absolutely no joke) and potentially one of those vending machines with emergency bits in, because everyone has done the thing of walking out of the house with something that they need and there's not always a well placed supermarket... (and even if you're in a supermarket, wrapping the baby up in a muslin toga or similar whilst you make a mad dash to the nappy aisle is one of my worst nightmares...) And all this is without even getting into the idea that having a parenting room should include somewhere to breastfeed or pump without taking the facility offline for everyone else for up to half an hour at a time.
