Concerns raised over OAPs trapped indoors during pandemic and cold snap

A meeting of Midlothian Integration Joint Board was told that additional support was needed to help elderly people who might have returned home from rehabilitation to continue exercising.

Grace Cowan, head of primary care and older people’s services at Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership, said that the impact of staying indoors on the elderly was being seen across the county.

She said: “We are seeing a lot of older people deconditioned because they are not going out.

“Their fitness level has decreased and we are requiring higher levels of care for people.”

She was speaking as the board was given an update on the work being done as part of the Falls and Fractures Prevention Strategy by the health team in Midlothian.

It revealed that over the space of a year, Scottish Ambulance Service was called to 784 falls in the county, adding: “The impact of harm from falls and fear of falling affect large numbers of people both directly and indirectly and can have a significant impact on well-being and prevent many people from experiencing healthy ageing.

“Covid-19 has only served to exacerbate this.”

Work to prevent people falling included working with roads to identify streets and pavements where vulnerable people lived, such as care homes or retired housing, and assessing people’s risk of falling when seen by health professionals.

Education events and training for staff were also included in the strategy, which called for more working with leisure services to provide more “exercise opportunities” for people at risk.

Asked about anecdotal evidence of an increase in people being seen at accident and emergency departments over the last couple of weeks, Ms Cowan said that while there had been an increase in trauma, it was not elderly people.

Instead she said it was ‘older’ adults who were coming in for treatment.

She said: “It is a slightly older age group who have been trying to run in this weather, exercise or sledging, that is older people, not the elderly.

“I have a lot of people in the 40-58 age group who have gone in with bumps, lumps and bruises over the last couple of days at the Western [General Hospital].”

Council leader Councillor Derek Milligan expressed surprise at the high number of falls attended by Scottish Ambulance Service in Midlothian between October 2019 and September 2020.

He suggested that the community planning services could use the connections built up over lockdown within local communities to support elderly people.

Angus McCann, board member, added: “This is a critical problem; it may seem minor but it is not.”

Among work being done as part of the strategy is looking at ways to involve a range of services from roads to leisure to support people at risk of falls.

Morag Barrows, board chief officer, called for work to continue to bring support for the problem from all departments and services.

She said: “It is good to see progress around falls. Falls needs to be everyone’s responsibility and need to be integrated into everything we do.”

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