Physiotherapy for Older People at Home
You've found the right people.
We are chartered physiotherapists who specialise in older people, and we come to you. Most of our work is with people in their eighties and nineties — after a fall, an operation, an illness, or a slow decline that’s been going on longer than anyone quite noticed.
No referral, no waiting list, and often at the door within 48 hours of a hospital discharge.
Most people find us because someone in the family noticed first. That she’s stopped going upstairs. That she’s holding the furniture. That she hasn’t been out since the fall — not because of the injury, but because she’s frightened of another one. Often the hospital has discharged her, the six weeks of NHS support have ended, and everyone has moved on except the person watching it happen.
You don’t need to wait for a crisis, and you don’t need permission.
Not sure whether we can help? Speak to Michelle or Christina — our coordinators are community physiotherapists, not call handlers. Tell us what’s actually happening and we’ll give you an honest answer, including if the answer is that we
can’t.
0800 772 0542 · Or send us a message
Conditions we commonly see
Most people we visit have several of these at once. That combination is usually the point —it’s what makes managing at home hard.
- After a fall or fracture — get moving and rebuild confidence
- After surgery — hip and knee replacements, recover quickly once home
- Frailty and deconditioning — after a hospital stay or illness, get going again
- Arthritis and long-term pain — hips, knees, backs and shoulders
- Osteoporosis — where the priority is preventing the next fracture
- Dementia — Alzheimer's, vascular, Lewy body and mixed presentations
- Parkinson's, stroke and MS — walking, turning, staying steady
- Heart failure and COPD — build stamina, breathe easier
- Reduced mobility with no single diagnosis — we assess and set a plan
If none of these quite describes it, it’s still worth a conversation. Sometimes there’s no single diagnosis and plenty that can be improved.
If you require physio in a care home, find out more on our care home physio service here.
If you've been told there's no rehabilitation potential
It’s one of the most common things families tell us, usually with some resignation. That she’s too old. That there’s no rehab potential. That nothing more can be done.
Sometimes that’s an honest clinical judgement. Often it means someone won’t return to exactly how they were — which may well be true, and isn’t the same thing at all.
Muscle responds to training at any age. The capacity to build strength doesn’t appear to be lost in very old age, and there is good evidence of measurable gains in people in their eighties and nineties. What changes is how a programme has to be designed and supported, not whether it works.
We’ll assess and tell you honestly what we think is achievable — including, sometimes, that it’s very little.
If she won't engage, that's what we're good at
Families often tell us this part with some embarrassment. That their mother won’t do the exercises. That she’s given up. That she was short with the last physiotherapist and hasn’t been the same since. That it’s hard to watch someone who was capable and independent become someone who needs help to stand up.
None of that is unusual, and none of it means we can’t help. It’s most of what we do.
Low mood is common in older people and often missed. Memory and planning change with age, so someone can want to do their exercises, understand why they matter, and still not be able to organise themselves into starting. Apathy looksexactly like refusal, and is usually neither stubbornness nor giving up.
We know how to work with that, and mostly it means designing around it rather than pushing through it. Fewer exercises, in the same order, every day. One instruction at a time, never two. Attached to something that already happens — after breakfast, before the news — rather than added to the day as a new event. Cues left where the activity happens, not on a sheet in a drawer. And someone else carrying the remembering, which is usually the family or the carer, and is the single biggest predictor of whether a programme continues.
We explain what we’re doing and why — to your mother, not over her head. Where low mood looks like part of the picture, we’ll say so and suggest you raise it with her GP.
We’ll also be straight with you about what we’re seeing. Being gentle and being honest aren’t in conflict.
Exercises designed for your home, that actually get done
Look at any physiotherapy exercise app. The demonstrator is thirty, on a mat, on the floor, in leggings. To someone of eighty-five, that picture says one thing: this is not for me. And they’re right — it isn’t.
Most home exercise programmes are handed over and never done. When that happens the patient gets the blame: not motivated, not compliant. We think the programme is usually at fault. It was written for someone else, in someone else’s house, at a level nobody came back to check.
So we built our own. Real rooms, real chairs, real people the age of the people we treat. Four decisions went into it, and every picture below is taken from it.
Filmed Where You'll Do Them
This is heel raises. Not in a gym — at a kitchen worktop, hands hovering over the surface, kettle on. Every exercise on our programmes is shown in the room it will actually be done in: the armchair, the edge of the bed, the bottom stair. Nobody is asked to get down onto the floor. If the person on screen is somewhere that looks like your house, the exercise looks like something you could do.
On Screen Or On Paper
Sit. Lean forward. Stand. Three pictures, no words needed — which is the point. A programme that only makes sense on a phone is a programme that gets abandoned when the phone is in the other room. Ours works on a tablet, on a phone, or printed large and left on the arm of the chair. Whatever gets it done is the right format.
It Changes As You Do
A cushion squeezed between the knees is where a lot of programmes start. It isn’t where they finish. Your physiotherapist updates the plan between visits — harder as you get stronger, exercises retired when they’ve done their job, new ones added when the next thing becomes possible. It’s a live plan, not a leaflet handed over once.
Made For You If Nothing Fits
Most libraries stop where the standard exercises stop. Ours doesn’t. If someone has an amputation, a stroke that affects one side, or a body that simply doesn’t do what the diagram shows, your physiotherapist films or builds the exercise for that person — this bridging exercise for a man with an above-knee amputation is one of them. The programme fits the patient, not the other way round.
Why we train everyone else too
Teaching The Purpose
Every exercise on the programme has a reason behind it, and we make sure the people around you know what it is. A carer who understands that a sit-to-stand is building the strength to get off a toilet unaided will protect that exercise. One who thinks it’s just a stretch won’t.
How Much Help
We spend three sessions teaching someone to stand from their armchair under their own power — leaning forward far enough to get their weight over their feet, which is frightening at first and takes real practice. Then a carer takes both hands and lifts them. Kindly, quickly, with the best intentions. That undoes the work.
When To Step Back
Nobody did anything wrong in that example; nobody had explained why it mattered. So we show carers and family exactly where to stand, what to say, and when to wait — including the uncomfortable pause while someone works out how to do it themselves. That’s how the other fifty contacts start pulling in the same direction.
Short, Functional and Fun.
Three rules govern every programme we write.
Short. Four exercises done every day beats twelve done twice. Long programmes get abandoned, and an abandoned programme achieves nothing.
Functional. We practise the things that actually matter — standing up from the chair you sit in, managing your own stairs, getting to your own bathroom at night. Not abstract movements that have to be translated into real life later.
Fun. Or at least tolerable, and preferably social. Rehabilitation that feels like a chore stops. Rehabilitation built into something you already do, with someone you like, continues.
