JoCo mom follows daughter’s lead, helps get facilities for kids with disabilities

When she was a kindergartener at Corinth Elementary, Olivia Bloomfield sat at a folding table alone, watching her peers play on the playground because her wheelchair couldn’t navigate the ground’s mulch.

“It was a very isolating and lonely experience,” said Sara Bloomfield, Olivia’s mother, who’s been living in Leawood for the last 13 years. “So then, the question became: How do we make this playground accessible?”

Olivia was born with Congenital Muscular Dystrophy, a genetic condition that affects muscular function, like her ability to ambulate her arms or legs, and weakness in her internal organs, like her lungs.

“Her functional ability until she was 10-and-a-half years old was that of a 4- to 5-month-old,” Sara said. “But through technology and adaptive equipment, she was actually very functional and attended school and was able to live a pretty great life.”

Olivia was an incredibly bright child, said Sara.

“She started talking really early — which was confusing with the diagnosis because she was stringing words together by the time she was 9 months old and reading by the time she was 2,” Sara said.

“So she was just very aware of the world and started speaking up about things that didn’t work for her and things that didn’t work for her friends.”

Olivia’s impact

By the time Olivia was in first grade, she could join her friends on the playground.

The Shawnee Mission School District had removed wood chips from the playground at Corinth — and at all 34 of the district’s sites — and amended its policies around updating playgrounds to prioritize schools that have an active need, like in Olivia’s case.

But the playgrounds were just the beginning for the young girl.

Olivia’s advocacy is part of the reason why the Kauffman Center has sensory rooms, and the Kansas City International Airport KC Current stadium both have accessible bathrooms. The stadium also has legacy seats named in her honor.

Olivia died unexpectedly in 2022 at age 10, but her family continues her advocacy efforts through the Olivia Bloomfield Foundation, which aims to help people with disabilities thrive in their communities.

Sara Bloomfield is currently fundraising to help two KC families renovate their bathrooms to make them more accessible for members who have disabilities. Last year she raised close to $60,000 to support her work.

“I think Olivia changed the way people saw disability and was so open to talking about it that it made everybody around her more comfortable,” Sara said. “We were fortunate that the community was open to this concept and continued to engage her.”

The costs and challenges

Sara started the foundation, in part, to help offset costs associated with providing people with disabilities the equipment they need to navigate their lives and resources are hard to come by.

“We saw this part of the world that we hadn’t been aware of and it really is in need of some changes,” she said. “It is very backwards and broken for people, and families are financially devastated by it.”

Insurance and government subsidies only cover so much, Bloomfield said. Olivia’s last wheelchair was $40,000, and her family was responsible for 20% of those costs. On top of that, they had to buy a new van that could transport a wheelchair, which costs at least $50,000 if people buy the vehicle used and $85,000 new, she said.

They remodeled their bathroom so Olivia could access it, and paid for therapy to help Olivia move her body.

“That is a lot that adds up massively,” Bloomfield said. “If their income is low enough, they qualify for Medicaid and there are some supports, but you get forced there. You get forced to that point, or you’re in the middle and you’re in a really tricky position.”

By forced, she said she means that some parents need to leave their jobs to provide the hands-on care their child needs.

Aware of the disparities at an early age, Olivia and her family partnered with Variety KC — a nonprofit dedicated to supporting children with disabilities — to fundraise for families’ needs and advocate for inclusive public spaces around the community.

“She helped us understand that inclusion isn’t a policy, it’s the details,” said Marc Harrell, the executive director and chief inclusion officer at Variety KC. “It’s whether a power wheelchair can navigate the path. It’s whether a child can sit next to her sister and swing.”

Harrell first saw Olivia speak to the Kansas City Council about inclusion when she was 4 years old, and her advocacy planted the seed for him to join in the efforts.

“Olivia taught Variety KC, and she taught me personally to never stop asking: who still can’t get here and what do we need to change?” he said. “Today, as Variety KC pursues building many fully inclusive playgrounds across the Kansas City metropolitan area, we carry Olivia with us.”

“Every pour-in-place rubber surface, every accessible swing, every park that says to a child in a wheelchair, ‘You belong here,’ is built on the foundation she laid.”

Inclusive public bathrooms

Public bathrooms — particularly the fact that people with disabilities often don’t have suitable facilities — is something Olivia liked to talk about in her advocacy, Bloomfield said.

“Even though there’s maybe a handicap stall, a bigger stall, it’s actually a much more complicated scenario than that, depending on the level of disability, depending on if they need a caregiver or not, if their caregiver is (opposite) gender,” she said.

Before Olivia died, the Bloomfields started working with officials during the Kansas City International Airport renovations to push for more inclusive restrooms throughout the terminals.

“As a family we travel a lot, and traveling with a wheelchair is extremely hard and it was near impossible with our old airport being that the only restrooms a (wheelchair) could access were outside of security,” Sara said. “So when a new airport became a thing, Olivia raised her hand and was like: ‘We’ve got to make this better.’”

Alongside Variety KC, Olivia advocated for inclusive restrooms with adult changing tables and extra space to transition between a wheelchair and the toilet. She conducted similar efforts when the KC Current women’s soccer stadium was being designed.

The partnership funded other pieces of adaptive equipment, including the first mobile accessible restroom in the country, which is a large accessible restroom on wheels that can be brought to outdoor events instead of porta-potties, Bloomfield said.

“Shortly after she passed away, it was all approved,” she said. “(The bathrooms are) the picture of inclusivity.”

Home remodels

Now, Bloomfield has been working to expand beyond public facilities into families’ homes. The foundation partnered with Schloegel Design Remodel — a Kansas City-based remodeling company — to help renovate people’s bathrooms.

“The average cost to remodel a bathroom in your home is $40,000 and that is not covered,” Bloomfieldshe said. “Schloegel was already interested in this and they were already doing some of it, but now it’s understanding the diagnosis, understanding what the child’s life is going to look like in their family’s home and how we can make it even better.”

They replaced the carpet with hardwood floors at one home because the child used a manual wheelchair, and they couldn’t propel on the carpet. They’ve expanded doorways to make it easier to enter both the bathroom and the rest of the household.

The partners are working on their fourth remodel and are seeing the number of applicants increase every year, Bloomfield said.

“And that’s something we’re very focused on expanding.”

Alongside home renovations, the Olivia Bloomfield Foundation provided equipment to every single family based on their individual needs.

“Last year, for example, we provided a lift for a kiddo so that they can get him out of his wheelchair into his potty seat,” she said. “But they also use it — because we got a mobile one — they use it to get him into a four wheeler, which he goes on with his dad every weekend.”

“It’s not, you know, a formula. It has to change for every family and based on their kid’s diagnosis and their needs.”

This story was originally published April 3, 2026 at 5:31 AM.