Public Health: Strength and Balance Programme

Baroness Thornton Excerpts

Thursday 18th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for pointing out the benefits of physiotherapy. She might be aware of a scheme in Middlesbrough that is providing for people who have fallen a precise pathway from physio into community activities involving strength and balance work. As ever, one of the challenges is to make sure that all local authorities know about such programmes and put them in place. They are not necessarily expensive, but they take a bit of time. I will make sure that Public Health England is taking that attitude of spreading good practice across the country.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, NICE’s most recent and excellent quality statements in January 2017 offer guidance on falls and the importance of multifactorial risk assessments and interventions. These interventions require resources, particularly from social care specialists and public health workers, who we know are at the sharp end because of the financial pressure the Government have put on local authority funding and the successive reductions of public health budgets. Now that the Secretary of State has responsibility for social care, will he therefore ensure that strength and balance programmes are properly resourced? When will NICE next update its statistics on the uptake of guidance on this matter?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

I will write to the noble Baroness with specifics on the NICE guidelines, which are incredibly important because they establish best practice. Of course, it is then incumbent on professionals to follow that best practice. We know that public health budgets have been under pressure, but local authorities are still getting £16 billion over five years. That is a lot of money and they can use some of it to focus on such activities. Moreover, in the spring Budget last year, there were big increases in the social care budget, which I know we all welcomed. That money is particularly focused on older people and preventing falls, which is what we want to see as part of that programme too.