practical living
Falls prevention
Community care workers
take on falls prevention.
Elissa Burton interviewed
by Dallas Bastian
T
raining community care workers in
falls prevention may help reverse
the declining number of clients
taking part in preventive exercise programs,
new research suggests.
Study lead Dr Elissa Burton, from the School
of Physiotherapy and Exercise Science at
Curtin University, said older people receiving
community care services in Australia are
twice as likely to fall as older people of the
same age who are not receiving services.
The research, published in the journal
Clinical Interventions in Aging, followed 25
community care workers across Western
Australia who delivered falls prevention
exercise programs to older clients who were
either at low or medium risk of falling over.
Each community care worker received four
hours of training before offering programs to
clients as part of existing services.
“Our research found that 82 per cent of
surveyed clients enjoyed the exercises they
were given, with 59 per cent saying the
activities in the falls prevention program
22 agedcareinsite.com.au
made a positive change in their health,”
Burton said.
“This tells us that the clients saw the
benefit of taking part in falls prevention
exercise programs and those programs were
safely incorporated into the existing services
offered by community care workers.”
Aged Care Insite spoke with Burton
about the training involved and the
feedback from clients.
ACI: Why did you decide to focus
on community care workers and
the role they may be able to play in
falls prevention?
EB: Well, I’ve done a lot of research
over the last seven years to do with
community care clients. We found that
falls prevention and the rate at which
they’re falling is a big issue. And often falls
prevention programs are short term, and
people might go and see a physio, or have
an OT come to their house and check for
home safety hazards and things like that,
but there’s no ongoing presence with a
physio or OT coming in once or twice,
whereas with this program, if it’s found to
be effective, it would be the home care
worker coming in on an ongoing basis
while the clients are receiving the services.
We know that to prevent falls, exercise
is really important, particularly strength
and balance exercises. So it just made
sense that a lot of these older people who
are receiving home care services on an
ongoing basis get to see their community
care workers on a regular basis, whether
it’s weekly or a couple of times a week or
fortnightly.
That’s a great opportunity for them to be
able to, firstly, deliver the exercise program,
and then to keep the clients motivated over
time – just check in to make sure they are
doing the exercises correctly, or at all. Often
people will do it for 6–8 weeks and feel
better, then they’ll stop, and that’s when the
strength and balance can decrease again.
So it’s keeping that motivation going.
What do community care workers work
through with clients? What are some of
the tenets of the program?
It all depends on what service they’re getting.
So if they’re getting personal care, that
means the community care worker will be
coming in and helping them with showering.
If they’re getting domestic assistance, they
will be coming in and assisting with their