Our successful collaboration with the Care Home Collaborative (CHC) within NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHS GGC) to increase physical activity opportunities for care home residents continues to grow. Our Dementia Friendly programme provides an on-going package of support, including training and resources, to all care home staff. The CHC currently supports 186 care homes across GGC, making this an ambitious partnership which aims to build on months of service improvement pilot work.
The required growth to meet the demand from GGC care homes is substantial, therefore a new exploratory approach supported a large-scale Strength and Balance training day for 55 care home staff from 18 different homes. This is the equivalent of four Strength and Balance workshops which are normally delivered one at a time over a period of several weeks. During the session on 22 February in West Dumbarton, care home staff learned how to encourage mobility through each of the Strength and Balance movements and how to build these into daily care plans and practice. Trained care home staff will take ownership of embedding walking with strength and balance into their care homes, utilising our resources, giving them confidence to support residents to be more active. Residents will have increased opportunities to participate in activities that improve their mobility, mental wellbeing, and quality of life.
This work has been supported by over six years of continuous learning with Perth and Kinross Health and Social Care partnership (P&K HSCP) which piloted and developed resources, methods of support and training to embed walking with strength and balance across all healthcare settings. A new report; Moving Forward: An evaluation of using walking with strength and balance in healthcare settings, which details the evolving development and partnership work that took place with P&K HSCP can be downloaded here.
In addition, a new Walking with Strength and balance Toolkit has been created to support all healthcare settings through a ‘test of change’ process to begin embedding these physical activity opportunities within their service. The Toolkit can be downloaded here.
Care about Walking and Strength and Balance resources can be downloaded and purchased from our dedicated page here.