Home Visit Physiotherapy in Godalming
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Physiotherapy at home in Godalming and the surrounding villages
We provide home-visit physiotherapy across Godalming and the surrounding villages.
Godalming sits in a valley with its houses spread up the hillsides around it — Frith Hill, Holloway Hill, Aarons Hill, Ockford Ridge — so for a great many people here, going to the shops means getting back up a hill afterwards. That is usually the first thing to go. Some families ring us with a relative still on Holly or Oak ward at Milford, waiting on a discharge date. More ring before any of that: a mother in Farncombe who has stopped walking down to the station, a father in Busbridge who has started taking the stairs one at a time. Nothing has happened yet, and that is exactly the point — the best time to ring is before the fall, not after it. There is no dignity in being helped out of a chair you used to get out of yourself, and it is hard to watch from the other side too.
Our services in Godalming include:
- Older people’s physiotherapy — falls, balance, and the confidence to stop planning the day around them.
- Dementia physiotherapy — keeping someone walking and transferring safely, at home or in the care home.
- Post-operative rehabilitation — after a hip or knee replacement at the Royal Surrey in Guildford, or while you are waiting for a place at Milford.
- Neurological physiotherapy — for stroke, Parkinson’s and MS, worked on your own floors.
- Respiratory physiotherapy — for breathlessness and COPD, so a flight of stairs stops being the whole morning.
- Muscle and joint pain — arthritis, back pain and the stiffness that follows a fracture.
- Care home physiotherapy — regular visiting sessions for residents across Godalming and the villages.
- Rehabilitation for case management clients — complex post-surgical and long-term rehabilitation, coordinated with your case manager.
Why families in Godalming come to us
Around one person in five across Waverley is over sixty-five, and the borough’s own neighbourhood plan is blunt about what that means: the over-55s are “the town’s fastest growing resident group”, and it expects the number of people over sixty-five to grow by roughly half by 2032. It also says something we would put on our own wall — that older people “are retaining their independence for longer and wish to remain in their own homes rather than move into an institutional setting”. That is the whole job.
- A named physiotherapist who lives here. Lucy Wood covers Godalming and the villages, so it is the same face each visit.
- Older people are not a sideline for us. It is the whole job.
- No referral needed — the NHS community rehabilitation team here takes referrals from health professionals only. You can ring us yourself.
- A whole hour, and we are not counting the minutes.
- We do not write people off. If you have been told something is not possible any more, we will look at why, and be honest with you either way.
- We work on your hill, not a corridor. A flat ward floor is not Holloway Hill in the rain.
The first visit is a thorough assessment that also contains treatment — never an hour of talking. The office sends a pre-assessment form out beforehand, so the history, the medication and any recent hospital stays are known before anyone arrives. What we are looking for is the barrier: what is actually stopping this person doing the thing they want to do. More often than not it is confidence rather than strength, or pain nobody has got on top of. Every course of treatment begins with that assessment and a plan built around a goal you choose.
Godalming has the hospital. What it does not have is your hill.
Milford Community Hospital, on Tuesley Lane, is in Royal Surrey’s own words “a community Frailty Unit with a multi-disciplinary team providing care to older patients” — thirty beds across Holly and Oak wards, with physiotherapists and occupational therapists on the unit. If the admission was more acute it will have been the Royal Surrey in Guildford: Eashing or Hindhead for older people, Elstead after a fracture, Frensham for a stroke. Between them they do a great deal, and they do it well.
What none of them can rehearse is the walk back up from the High Street. Godalming sits in a valley with its housing spread up the slopes around it, and a ward corridor is level, wide and has a rail on both sides. This is the gap we close. Ring us with the discharge date and we will book the first visit around it.
Ten days on a ward can cost a decade of strength
Muscle goes quickly once somebody stops using it, and fastest in the people who can least afford to lose it. It is not the illness that does it. It is the sitting still — and it carries on at home afterwards, quietly, in a comfortable chair with everybody being kind.
British Geriatrics Society, key messages on frailty
“If it is always done for her, she will not get stronger.”
Not a criticism of anyone. It is quicker to do it for her, it is safer in the moment, and it feels kinder — any of us would. But every stand somebody else does is a stand she has not done. What we do is show whoever is there, family or carers, where the rehabilitation is hiding inside the day they already have.
How we close the gap
As soon as you have a date
Ring us with the discharge date and we book the first visit around it.
The same physiotherapist each time
So nobody starts again from the beginning, and progress carries forward between visits.
Your family, shown what to do
The exercises work best when they carry on between visits. We show whoever is there what helps, and what to leave alone.
Back up from the High Street
The hill home is the thing most people here quietly stop doing. It makes a far better goal than anything we could set in a front room, and it is the one that keeps somebody independent.
The things people actually want back
Nobody rings us asking for a stronger quadriceps. They ring because something ordinary has stopped being possible, and it is the ordinary things that decide whether a week is worth having. These are the goals we hear most often in Godalming, and they are the ones we measure against.
- Getting out of your own chair without a hand under your arm.
- The stairs, without planning them the night before.
- The hill home, without having to stop halfway and pretend to look at something.
- Standing long enough to make a proper cup of tea.
- Getting in and out of a car — so the appointment, the funeral and the grandson’s wedding stay possible.
- A night without working out how you will manage the bathroom.
None of these is a small thing. Each one is a piece of somebody’s independence, and each one is specific enough to work towards and to measure. We write down where you are at the first visit, so progress later is a fact rather than an impression.
Areas we cover in and around Godalming
Godalming itself
- Godalming town centre
- Farncombe
- Binscombe
- Charterhouse
- Catteshall
- Ockford Ridge
- Holloway Hill
Busbridge and the southern villages
- Busbridge
- Crownpits
- Hambledon
- Hascombe
- Munstead
- Thursley
Milford, Witley and the west
- Milford
- Witley
- Elstead
- Peper Harow
- Shackleford
- Compton
- Aarons Hill
- Frith Hill
That covers most of GU7 and GU8. If your road is not on the list, ring us anyway — the boundary is about how far a physiotherapist can sensibly travel in a day, not a line on a map.
Your physiotherapist in Godalming
Helping you recover using physiotherapy in the comfort of your home
FAQ - Your local questions
Can you help my mother home from Holly or Oak ward at Milford?
Yes, and it is worth ringing before she is discharged rather than after. Milford is a frailty unit and the therapy team there will have got her standing and walking on a flat, level floor with staff at hand. Her own hallway, her own stairs and the slope up to her front door are a different job, and the first fortnight home is when most of the ground is lost. We take referrals straight from families — no GP letter, no waiting list. Tell us the discharge date when you have it and we will get the first visit into that week.
She has stopped walking down into town because of the hill back up. Is that worth a call?
It is the call we most wish families made sooner, and in Godalming it is the commonest one. The hill is usually the first thing to go: it is easier to drive, then easier not to bother, and within a few months the legs have followed the habit down. Nothing dramatic has to happen for somebody to lose a great deal of strength. We would work on the actual route — the front step, the pavement, the first rise, the bench halfway if there is one — rather than on exercises that have nothing to do with where she wants to go.
Do you come out to the villages, or only into Godalming itself?
We come to you. Godalming and Farncombe, and out to Busbridge, Milford, Witley, Elstead, Shackleford, Peper Harow, Hambledon, Hascombe, Thursley and Compton. There is no clinic to get to and no car park to negotiate, which for a lot of our clients is the whole point — the journey to an appointment is often harder than the appointment.
My father was referred to the NHS community team and nothing has happened. Can we just ring you?
Yes. Royal Surrey’s community rehabilitation team covers Guildford and Waverley and does good work, but it takes referrals from health professionals only — a family cannot refer directly, and the service is built around self-management between visits. We are chartered physiotherapists and you can ring us yourself, today. With his permission we are glad to keep his GP informed, and if the NHS team is already involved we will work alongside them rather than across them.
She has carers coming in and she is still going backwards. I do not understand it.
There is usually a simple explanation, and it is not that anyone is doing a bad job. Strength is built by repetition, and a care visit is designed to be efficient — the transfer done in one smooth movement, the tea made while she sits, the cardigan fetched rather than found. Each of those is a repetition she no longer does, and over a few weeks the total adds up to a great deal of lost practice. The answer is rarely more care. It is deciding which parts of the day she does herself, even slowly, and making sure everyone around her knows which those are.
My husband was told after his stroke that this is as good as it gets. Is it worth trying anything?
It is worth another look, and we will be straight with you either way. That kind of judgement is made at a moment in time, about how things stood then, and it is usually right about that moment. What it cannot account for is what happens with more time than anyone had available. Most missed goals are missed for want of practice rather than because a ceiling was reached. We would start by finding out what is actually in the way — often confidence rather than strength, sometimes pain nobody has got on top of — and tell you plainly whether we think it will shift.
Who would actually come, and would it be the same person each time?
Lucy Wood covers Godalming and the villages around it, and she lives locally. That matters more than it sounds: the same physiotherapist each visit means nobody starts again from the beginning, progress carries forward, and somebody notices when a thing has changed. You will know who is coming and roughly when. Our fees are published in full on the pricing page.
Local support in Godalming
As well as physiotherapy, families often need to know what else is out there. These are the organisations we are asked about most, and none of them charges for advice.
Surrey County Council adult social care — where an assessment of care needs starts.
Age UK Surrey — free local information and advice.
Action for Carers Surrey — for anyone looking after somebody, at any age.
Care homes in Godalming
Most of this work is arranged and paid for privately by families — a block of visits after a fall or a hospital stay, or ongoing work to keep someone moving. It sits alongside whatever the home already provides, and we work with their staff so the exercises carry on between our visits. You can read more about additional physiotherapy for residents.
Care home managers in Godalming — get in touch to discuss regular visiting physiotherapy for your residents.
Godalming is one of our Surrey areas, alongside home visit physiotherapy in Guildford and Woking. If the town you need is not listed, see all the areas we cover — or ring us anyway and we will tell you honestly whether we can reach you.