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. Others ring much earlier: a mother in Farncombe who no longer walks down to the station, a father in Busbridge who now comes downstairs holding the rail with both hands. No fall, no hospital, just a slow narrowing of the day. That is the moment we would choose to be asked. Needing a hand to rise from your own armchair takes something from a person, and their family feels it too.
Our services in Godalming include:
- Older people’s physiotherapy — steadier on the slopes and steps, and less of the day spent working out how to avoid them.
- Dementia physiotherapy — well-known movements rehearsed in the rooms where they happen, timed for the best part of the day.
- Post-operative rehabilitation — after a new hip or knee at the Royal Surrey in Guildford, or during the wait for a bed at Milford.
- Neurological physiotherapy — following a stroke, or for Parkinson’s and MS, worked through on your own stairs and floors.
- Respiratory physiotherapy — breathlessness and COPD, paced so the walk back up from the High Street comes back into reach.
- Muscle and joint pain — arthritic knees and hips, sore backs, and getting going again after a fracture.
- Care home physiotherapy — one-to-one sessions for residents in Godalming, Farncombe and Milford, arranged around the home’s day.
- Rehabilitation for case management clients — longer, more complicated recoveries, planned and reported 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.
- Every physiotherapist who visits is chartered, HCPC registered and a member of the CSP.
- No GP letter is needed. Ring us yourself, or ask a relative or the care home to ring for you.
- We practise on the slope outside your own front door and the staircase inside it, not on gym equipment.
- Gentle and unhurried. The pace is set by the person, not by the clock.
- We talk to your family, your carers and your GP, so everyone is working together to help you.
- When somebody has said there is no more to be gained, we take a second look and give you a straight answer.
Before the first visit our office sends a short form, so Lucy already knows the history, the medication and any recent hospital stay when she arrives. That leaves the hour for what matters: watching how you move around your own home, finding what is really in the way, and starting work on it there and then. Often it turns out to be confidence, or pain nobody has dealt with, more than strength. Before she leaves you will have a goal you chose and a plan for reaching it, and whoever helps you at home will know their part in it.
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.
No ward can reproduce the climb back from the High Street. The town lies in a valley and most homes are somewhere up the side of it, while a hospital corridor is flat, broad and railed on both sides. That difference is where we work. Tell us the discharge date and the first visit is arranged to match it.
“Just 10 days of bed rest in a community or acute hospital leads to the equivalent of 10 years ageing in the muscles of people 80 and over.”
That is how Oxford’s NHS trusts put it when they launched their campaign to get patients up, dressed and moving. Muscle goes quickly once somebody stops using it, and the stillness follows people home, into the armchair, where everyone means well. Waiting has a cost too. NICE’s guideline on intermediate care warns that “delays in starting intermediate care increase the risk of further deterioration and reduced independence”.
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, April 2018 · NICE guideline NG74, recommendation 1.5.3
“If it is always done for her, she will not get stronger.”
Nobody is being blamed. Doing it for her is faster and feels like kindness, and any of us would be tempted. The trouble is that each time someone else stands her up, she misses one more go at it herself. So we point out to relatives and carers the moments in an ordinary day that are really rehabilitation in disguise.
How we close the gap
Ready when she comes home
Ring us while your relative is still in hospital, and we can be there in the first days back.
The same physiotherapist, wherever we can
So nobody starts again from the beginning, and progress carries forward between visits.
Your family, shown what to do
Practice between visits is what makes the difference. Whoever is around learns which things to encourage and which to leave well alone.
Back up from the High Street
Walking back up the hill is what tends to lapse first in Godalming. As a target it beats any exercise we could invent indoors, because getting it back is what keeps a person living their own life.
What people in Godalming ask to get back
No one phones about quadriceps. They phone because some everyday thing has slipped out of reach, and everyday things are what make a week feel like their own. In Godalming these come up again and again, and we judge our work by them.
- Rising from your own armchair with nobody steadying your elbow.
- Going upstairs when you feel like it, not when you have built up to it.
- The hill home, without having to stop halfway and pretend to look at something.
- Staying on your feet while the kettle boils and the tea brews.
- Climbing into the passenger seat and out again, so a lift to a wedding or a hospital appointment is no trouble.
- Getting to the toilet in the night, instead of waiting for the carers to change you in the morning.
Each of these is a slice of independence, and each is concrete enough to aim at. Your starting point is recorded on day one, which means later improvement can be shown and not just felt.
What we help with at home in Godalming
- Falls and balanceFinding out why the fall happened, then building the strength and balance to prevent the next.
- Getting weaker at homeStrength and balance work for people who are getting weaker without a hospital stay.
- After a hospital stayRebuilding strength lost in a hospital bed, so home is manageable again.
- Hip or knee replacementFrom crutches to walking outdoors again, following your surgeon’s instructions.
- DementiaShort, calm sessions at the best time of day, with carers shown how to carry them on.
- StrokeRelearning to stand, step and use the weaker side, with practice built into the day.
There is more on each of these on our physiotherapy for older people and neurological physiotherapy pages.
Where we visit in and near 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
Most of GU7 and GU8 falls inside that list. If you cannot see your road, phone regardless: the limit is set by a sensible day’s driving for the physiotherapist.
Your physiotherapist in Godalming
Helping you recover using physiotherapy in the comfort of your home
FAQ - Your local questions
Mum is on Holly ward at Milford and due out soon. Can you be ready for her?
Yes, and the best time to phone is while she is still on the ward. Milford is a frailty unit, and its therapists will have had her up and walking on smooth, even floors with help close by. Home asks more: a narrow hall, a staircase, the incline to the front door, and the opening two weeks are when people slip back furthest. Families can book us directly. Give us the date once it is fixed and we will fit the first session into those early days.
She has stopped walking down into town because of the hill back up. Is that worth a call?
This is the enquiry we would most like to receive early, and Godalming produces it more than any other. The hill goes first: driving becomes easier, then staying in becomes easier still, and a few months later the legs have weakened to match. It takes no crisis for a lot of strength to disappear. Our work would follow her real route, from the front step along the pavement to the first rise and a bench part-way if one exists, not a set of movements unrelated to where she is trying to get to.
We are out at Elstead. Is that further than you travel?
Every visit happens at your address. That means Godalming and Farncombe, plus Busbridge, Milford, Witley, Elstead, Shackleford, Peper Harow, Hambledon, Hascombe, Thursley and Compton. Nobody has to find a parking space or sit in a waiting room, and for many of the people we see that matters a great deal, since reaching a clinic can take more out of them than the treatment.
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.
My wife’s memory is poor and nothing we practise seems to stick. Is there any use in physiotherapy?
Yes, because the benefit does not depend on her remembering them. Strength and balance improve through doing, whether or not the session is recalled afterwards, and familiar movements tend to stay when new instructions do not. So we work through real things in your own home: getting up from her chair, walking to the kitchen, managing the step into the garden. The part that does need remembering falls to you or to her carers, and we keep that short, usually two or three things folded into the day you already have. We come at the time she is most settled, and we tell you plainly if we think it has stopped helping.
Since his stroke my husband has been told to expect no more improvement. Should we leave it there?
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 W. covers Godalming and the villages around it, and she lives locally. That matters more than it sounds: seeing the same physiotherapist wherever we can 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
Families tend to need more than physiotherapy alone. The three services below are those we get asked about, and their advice is free.
Surrey County Council adult social care — the first call for a care needs assessment.
Age UK Surrey — independent guidance for older people, at no charge.
Action for Carers Surrey — support for unpaid carers of every age.
Care homes in Godalming
Godalming’s care homes include Care UK’s Jubilee House on Pound Lane and Broadwater Lodge in Farncombe, and Anchor’s Eastlake on Nightingale Road. Families usually arrange these visits themselves, often after a fall or a spell in hospital, or to keep a resident walking. We agree times with the home, work one to one in the resident’s own room, and leave the staff a note of what helps between visits. You can read more about physiotherapy for care home 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.