What is the Falls Prevention and Physical Activity Community of Practice?
The Notts Falls Prevention and Physical Activity Community of Practice hope to see the impact from meaningful conversations about re-conditioning and falls prevention at every level (within community, clinical and care settings).
Which will ultimately lead to stronger, happier, healthier people across Notts.
what was heard from the Community that will help?
• Workforce development: support people across community, clinical and care settings
• Evidence-based activity: developing and embedding a coordinated offer in all settings (community, clinical and care)
• Positioning of physical activity & movement: to enable cultural change shifting towards prevention
“If we do nothing 110,000 more older people are projected to have at least one fall per year as a result of reduced strength and balance activity during the pandemic.” (PHE 2021)
The community of practice for falls and physical activity in Nottinghamshire was launched with a bang on 5th November 2021 via an online event which saw 80 people attend and join in the conversation. The project team began regularly meeting towards the end of summer 2021, through the Autumn. Meetings were regularly spent discussing plans and content for the first session as well as plans for spreading awareness and harnessing interest across their own networks. They attracted a diverse spread of organisations in attendance with representation from acute, community, mental health and primary care health sectors, along with social care, third sector organisations, commissioning and public health.
Lockdown was about breaking our connections with others to prevent the spread of disease. In a post lockdown world re-creating these connections through a community of practice seemed like the right approach to take to recondition our most vulnerable populations. The Community of Practice has created a space to share stories, meaningful conversations, learnings and resources. The community of practice for falls and physical activity in Nottinghamshire holds seasonal events and promotes an ethos of shared ownership. To continue to share knowledge and ideas on how we can tackle the huge problem of deconditioning and create a system pivot shift towards prevention which will support our population in reconditioning in order to stay strong and live happier, healthier, independent and more active lives.
During the first year of the community of practise we heard that communication, (or a lack of) was one of the biggest barriers to us realising our dream of a joined-up care system for patients at risk of falls. There was a clear gap in people knowing the current best practices and having knowledge of what was happening in their areas and in others. So we have made some steps to address this.
NHS Futures is the platform we have chosen to use as our communication hub. It is hoped that this space will go some way in bridging those gaps, but it will need the contributions of all members to be successful. Got something to share?
Joining instructions are in the document below.
Strength and Balance Activity provision in Notts
As part of this work, we have been building a map of activity in Notts that supports Strength and Balance. Zoom into the map to see where this activity is taking place and get in touch with either the venue where it’s taking place or with the provider if listed to find out more. We have colour coded these sessions:
Green: general low impact activity
Orange: Chair-Based Exercise that includes Otago principles
Red: Falls Management Exercise classed delivered by trained Postural Stability Instructors
If you know of an activity that isn’t detailed in this Google Map below then please let us know by clicking the below button and filling in the form. If you have any issues please contact us at info@activenotts.org.uk and we will add it to our Map.
Download and view the PDF below.
