Help & Advice

Practical guidance for families looking after an older relative at home — written by the chartered physiotherapists who visit them.

We have a team of outstanding physiotherapists, and between them they have spent decades in people’s homes: after hip replacements, after strokes, after the fall that changed everything. What they see every week is knowledge that rarely leaves the profession. These articles are our attempt to get it out.

Most of what is written about physiotherapy is written for physiotherapists. This is not that. These are the questions we get asked in kitchens and hallways, usually by a son or daughter who has just realised their mother is not managing as well as she says she is.

We write it because the honest answers are hard to find. Some of what circulates about hospital stays, falls and recovery is oversimplified, some of it is out of date, and some of it is frightening in ways it does not need to be. Where a figure gets quoted a lot, we go back to the study it came from and tell you what it actually says.

Who this is for: families arranging care for a parent, people recovering at home after a hospital stay or an operation, and anyone weighing up whether physiotherapy would help. Care home managers and case managers will find some of it useful too.

Everything here is written by a named, chartered, HCPC-registered physiotherapist who does this work every week. Nothing here replaces an assessment — but it should help you ask better questions of whoever is doing one.