Kay’s blog: We volunteers helped to bring a falls prevention programme to our rural community – this is how we did it

By Kay Baggley, Hartington Community Group Volunteer and Volunteer Information Champion

In the Peak District community of Hartington something remarkable is happening.

Our local community group has been running in Hartington Village Hall for a number of years.

We host regular community meetings for all ages including a parent and toddler group, sport and leisure activities and social gatherings, just to name a few.

Our village has 300 residents and if you are unable to use transport, then reaching health and wellbeing services can be difficult as most are 12 or more miles away in the more populated urban areas of Buxton, Glossop, Bakewell and Ashbourne.

I worked for many years in the NHS as a nurse. In the 90s I worked in a hospital-based falls clinic and we used to assess and review the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that were leading people to fall – both in terms of their personal health and the environment they lived in.

Early in 2000, when I was doing my degree in health and community practice, my dissertation focused on the latest research on ways to prevent older people falling in community settings.

The research showed that strength and balance exercise was one of the effective factors in falls prevention but at that time most of this work was done by physiotherapists in hospital settings.

I suggested a new model of community-based falls prevention in my dissertation which came unfortunately just before initiatives and funding were available for falls strategies. So I didn’t have the opportunity to put theory into practice at that time.

Moving to Hartington three years ago I felt I could perhaps put my health and social care knowledge to use and help support my village.

I found that people in Hartington and surrounding rural villages were not receiving the same equal access and opportunity to health and social care information like that of our neighbouring urban areas such as Bakewell, Buxton, Ashbourne and Glossop.

So Hartington Community Group Volunteer Liz Broomhead and I started to engage and collaborate with Derby, Derbyshire, High Peak health and social care professionals and the voluntary sector.

Liz and I gave our community an opportunity to say what kind of health and social care information they wanted to learn and hear about via a suggestion box, chatting face to face or sitting and talking at our rural social group/activities.

Having listened to them, we created a tailored information day in the village hall and invited the Citizens Advice Service, Derbyshire Carers Association and Age UK Falls Prevention service, which is now known as Live Stronger for Longer.

It is important to listen to people’s needs and let communities take the lead and make choices rather than everything being service led.

We found people are more likely to become involved.

The community were very interested and engaged with information about the falls classes.

There is a six week high-to-medium risk falls programmes running at Buxton Hospital which our local GP can refer people who fall.  

But this is just out of reach for a fair proportion of our residents and with the dark nights and harsh weather in winter this can be difficult to access.

The national falls guidance suggests that a programme of strength and balance exercise should be maintained indefinitely to help prevent further falls, so it advocates that people who have fallen to continue to attend classes.

Research shows that if you have a fall or a fear of falling there is potential for you to fall again.

Liz and I collaborated with Age UK’s Live Stronger for Longer and the Joined Up Care Derbyshire Engagement Team to start our own local falls class in Hartington.

We were keen to ensure the classes were sustained, to ensure people would not have to stop the strength and balance exercise that we know is so crucial in preventing falls.

The Age UK Falls Co-ordinator Sarah Smith supported the classes for 13 weeks and now Ann Kemp-Eyre, who has an established yoga class in the village hall, has been trained by Age UK to deliver the classes on an ongoing basis.

People will pay a small fee and the classes will keep running. She, and others like her, understand our local community and are integrated into it, even if they don’t live in the village.

We are pleased to say that we now have a second Live Longer for Stronger classes running in our neighbouring village of Biggin.

The classes have helped to remove the barriers people would otherwise face, such as transport, or the weather, or social isolation.

The classes are going really well. The exercises help people to maintain their confidence and mobility. They provide the skills people need to stay upright in crowds, or if they are living alone.

It has taken me a little time to put my community based falls programme into practice but I am so pleased it has finally happened

Liz and I have developed good links with the local GP practice in Hartington and the Buxton Falls Clinic and we have received many referrals.

We reached out initially to the NHS and Joined Up Care Derbyshire and we continue to work with those organisations and they are now listening to us.

This has been possible because of the support of our local community and local services. Liz says it’s taken several decades from when she first looked at doing something like this, but you should never stop trying.

We have done this with very little funding, through volunteers and with very little red tape, but it has begun to achieve something really positive.

I have no doubt that this service will continue to benefit people and will avoid the strain on NHS services such as ambulances and our GP surgery.

We know the NHS is under significant pressure, but we can help in a safe, positive and proactive way through the strength in our community.