Action Falls for Domiciliary Care

Action Falls is a falls management programme for older people living in a care home that proactively identifies risk factors for falling and promotes actions to reduce these risks. This can include things such as reviewing medications, checking footwear is appropriate and supporting more activity. It has been collaboratively developed with care home staff, clinicians and researchers. The programme includes a training programme for care home staff, a manual, and a checklist of risk factors and actions. In the course of the work with the care home sector, domiciliary care providers, care organisations and social care practitioners have raised that Action Falls would be beneficial for domiciliary care. Areas where it would need to be adapted have been identified by these groups which include an increased focus on older people and their relatives who support with care needs. It is the push from the sector that has led to this collaborative grant.

Aims and objectives:

The aim is to adapt Action Falls for domiciliary care settings. The work will meet the following objectives:

• To explore the context of delivering Action Falls in domiciliary care
• To adapt the Action Falls materials to meet the needs of people accessing domiciliary care
• To develop a logic model of the adapted intervention

Evaluation plan:

Action Falls will be adapted, implemented and evaluated using the Adapt framework:

• Step One: To identify Action Falls as a potential intervention for domiciliary care. This has already been completed with Action Falls being identified as a potential intervention.
• Step Two: To plan for and undertake adaptations to Action Falls for domiciliary care. This will be done by exploring the context of domiciliary care by observing domiciliary care visits and carrying out interviews with older people, domiciliary care workers and owners and commissioners. The Action Falls materials will then be adapted using co-design workshops.

The final step (step 3) will be to evaluate the delivery of Action Falls. This will be done in a future study

Inclusion criteria

Observations:

• Domiciliary care workers working in the settings and localities in the sample and providing support to older people
• Social care practitioners working in the settings and localities in the sample

Interviews:

• Older people (65 years and over) supported by domiciliary care and providing support to older people
• Relatives of older people supported by domiciliary care
• Social care practitioners
• Owners of domiciliary care
• Commissioners and senior decision makers in Lincolnshire County Council and Nottinghamshire County Council

Co-design workshops:

• Domiciliary care workers working in BelleVie Care
• Older people (65 years and over) supported by domiciliary care
• Relatives of older people supported by domiciliary care
• Social care practitioners
• Owners of domiciliary care
• Commissioners and senior decision makers in Lincolnshire County Council and Nottinghamshire County Council

Exclusion criteria

• Lack of capacity to give informed consent