Falls prevention
Vision, aim, principles, approach and priorities
Our vision
To prevent and reduce the number of falls and their negative impact by providing a whole system approach that encompasses a borough-wide direction for commissioning, service planning and delivery.
By working together, we want to improve quality of life and reduce the fear of falling. We want to achieve a decline in the number of falls and reduce the need for hospital admission. Enabling those who are at risk of falling, or have fallen, to have access to standardised assessments, evidence based preventative services, high quality treatment, and support, from a wide range of service providers.
Our aim
To reduce the numbers of people aged 65 and older who fall and need to be admitted to hospital through the commissioning and delivery of an integrated, evidenced based, falls prevention pathway across Cheshire West and Chester.
Our principles
Our overall goal is to reduce the number of people aged 65 and over who are admitted to hospital as a result of a fall.
To understand the health inequalities, and wider social determinants across our communities that impact the number of falls, and those at risk of falling, so that we can work together with residents and our partners to close these gaps.
Providing new ways of working by developing new models of support and service delivery, as well as looking to best practice, to serve our residents better in the right locations, based upon community need and ensuring a person-centred approach.
Committing to challenge how we deliver services across the borough, with a place based approach that is inclusive for all our residents.
Ensuring we have a borough-wide approach that allows all of our residents the same timely access and level of care to prevent and reduce falls.
Working together with our communities and partners to ensure the best outcomes are achieved for those at risk and affected by falls.
Our approach
This strategy will seek to reduce any inequalities in the delivery of falls services, ensuring an equitable offer is available across the borough.
A key area of focus within this strategy is to raise the awareness of falls prevention across Cheshire West and Chester.
Effective partnership working is key to the delivery of this strategy as is the involvement of the public through consultation and community engagement.
Decisions about services and programmes should be based upon the best available information and evidence. Our strategy is also based on our knowledge of local need.
Empowerment is about individuals and communities increasing control over their lives and their health.
Our priorities
A Joint Strategic Needs Assessment (JSNA) can help inform current and future health, care and wellbeing needs of our local community to support local decision making. The information from the JSNA can guide an evidenced based falls prevention pathway and our joint commissioning intentions in relation to the development of a system wide response to falls.
Outcome:
The publication of an evidenced evidence-based Falls Joint Strategic Needs Assessment.
What will we do:
Work collaboratively to produce an updated Falls JSNA to inform our falls prevention pathway and future commissioning intentions.
Often falls can be prevented, or repercussions of the fall reduced with timely intervention. As the number of emergency hospital admissions because of a fall in people aged 65 and over has not declined over the past decade, it is important that there is a real drive on raising awareness of falls and contributing factors, with cross sector collaboration at the heart of this. By producing a robust, but realistic action plan, with clear goals, and by working in partnership with key stakeholders, such as the fire and rescue service, care homes, voluntary sector, domiciliary care providers, health, and social care, we can look to raising awareness of falls prevention across the borough. Focusing too on how we can enable our residents to remain independent for longer as they age.
Outcome:
A clear, concise, and realistic action plan that is co-produced by key stakeholders, based on the needs and experience of service users and those with lived experience.
What we will do:
Bring together key partners and organisations to co-produce a detailed falls prevention action plan for the whole borough that considers:
- A person-centred approach that incorporates service user feedback and experiences
- Review progress to date, evaluate practice and service provision against the current evidence base
- Review current commissioning arrangements in respect of falls prevention services and make recommendations for future service provision
- Ensure a borough wide approach that tackles health inequalities, and raises awareness of falls prevention
- Agree realistic timescales and ensure robust sustainability of recommended actions
- Consider the impact of COVID-19 on our ageing population and how it has affected both those at risk of fall, those who have fallen, and service provision
- Ensure synergy with other strategies and plans where relevant
To ensure the implementation of the action plan, and to monitor and review progress, there is the need to develop a group of key stakeholders to take on this accountability. The group will ensure that we are actively improving falls prevention in Cheshire West and Chester, and that this improvement will continue sustainably. We also need to continually assess that the action-plan continues to reflect and develop in line with public and stakeholder needs and wishes, that sees improved falls prevention across the borough.
Outcomes:
To drive forward our strategy and action plan that actively sees continuous improvement in falls prevention across Cheshire West and Chester.
What will we do:
- Review and redesign existing delivery and governance structures
- Establish group key membership to take ownership and drive forward the action plan, with agreed clear lines of accountability for delivery and monitoring
- Assess and reflect on progress to date to ensure our actions are up to date and in line with service user needs
We will use the information from the updated Falls JSNA to develop a boroughwide integrated falls prevention pathway. With a pathway in place, we will aim to reduce the risk and occurrence of falls and their impacts such as pain, injury, loss of confidence and loss of independence. A pathway will also provide an integrated, streamlined response for intervention and treatment to achieve better outcomes and better use of resources, ensuring that we intervene at the right times and in the right way to prevent, treat and mitigate the impact of falls.
Outcome:
A collaborative approach between organisations, utilising existing resources in a system that places service users at the heart of the service and improves their experience and outcomes.
What will we do:
- Work collaboratively to produce an updated Falls JSNA to inform our pathway and future action planning
- Develop a single pathway which is deliverable boroughwide so that it is inclusive for all our residents
- Design a pathway that supports an integrated approach to prevent, intervene, and treat falls
- Ensure the pathway focuses on the timeliness of the response to provide fallers, or potential fallers, with the support they need
- Continue to assess and review the pathway to ensure it continues to meet the needs of our residents
Measuring our success
Based upon the Public Health Outcomes Framework (PHOF) success will focus on:
- A reduction of the number of emergency hospital admissions due to falls in people aged 65 and over. At a minimum, to be in line with the England average.
- A reduction in the number of emergency hospital admissions due to falls in people aged 80+. At a minimum, to be in line with the England average.
As these high level indicators from the PHOF are national statistics, we already have a baseline for these. This will enable us to to track trends over time and compare our performance with regional and statistical neighbours. However, given that we also want to tackle inequalities in our approach to Falls Prevention, and to reflect our strengths based and preventative approach in Cheshire West and Chester, additional local outcomes will also be developed and agreed by the Strategic Falls Group.
