Falls prevention week September 2023 – share your plans

Preventing falls for people who live in BSW is important to lots of different teams working across the BSW Together partnership and it’s an issue we’re keen to highlight during falls prevention week which this year takes place from 18 to 22 September.

Each and every one of us has a role to play in raising awareness of falls across community, clinical and care settings and, ahead of the week, we are keen to hear from colleagues regarding the fantastic work happening to prevent and respond to falls across BSW ICS. 

Finding out more about your plans will help us promote awareness, improve connections across the system, and inform future development. 

If you are leading on falls schemes, interventions or trials, we would like to hear from you.  To share news of what is happening in your locality in order that we can celebrate this more widely, please contact your Locality Commissioner.

• Wiltshire: Drew Holloway drew.holloway@nhs.net
• BaNES: Vanessa Rubery vanessarubery@nhs.net
• Swindon: Charlotte Richards charlotte.richards16@nhs.net

Falls and related injuries are increasingly common. Nationally, emergency admissions for falls in people 65+ have increased year on year – from 185,000 in 2010/11 to 234,000 in 2019/2020, representing a 26 per cent increase.

The impact of falling is an important driver on demands for Health and Social Care services. They can also negatively affect functional independence and quality of life and, when resulting in a lie of over one hour in length, are also strongly associated with serious injuries, admission to hospital, and subsequent moves into long-term care.