Care...about physical activity

Care...about physical activity improvement programme

In 2016, the Care Inspectorate was commissioned by the Scottish Government to lead the Care…about physical activity (CAPA) improvement programme. As part of the programme we worked with 140 care services across eight local authority partnership areas to help care providers build physical activity and more movement into the daily lives of those they support. This has helped reduce falls, increase strength and created independence for many older people in Scotland. Adult service inspectors in the areas were closely involved as part of their scrutiny and improvement work supporting services to provide high quality care and support that is right for each individual.

We received additional funding from the Scottish Government in September 2018 to expand the programme to these neighbouring partnership areas:

• Ayrshire and Arran
• Forth Valley
• Grampian
• Tayside
• Lanarkshire
• Glasgow
• Orkney and Shetland.

This means we can continue to work with more care services to ensure older people in care get the support they need to move more in ways that matter to them to improve their quality of life. The project will run until May 2020.

Since October 2018 we have:

• recruited the programme team
• invited and engaged with the new local partnership areas to identify local leads and care services in each area for specific improvement support
• appointed the evaluation team to measure the programme’s impact and success
• agreed baseline measures and how we will gather data.

Here is what we are doing and when

CAPA timeline

Throughout the programme we will also:

• integrate this work with the Health and Social Care standards
• measure our framework and evaluate progress
• provide useful information for inspectors to support their work
• design and deliver learning and development sessions with care services, stakeholders in health, inspectors, leisure, community groups and Allied Healthcare Professionals (AHPs)
• promote improvement approaches.

Evaluation

Independent research commissioned by the Care Inspectorate investigated psychological and physiological impacts of moving more often. The evaluation found that older people involved in the programme have significantly improved their hand grip strength, their low leg strength, gradually increased their flexibility which improved mobility and levels of independence and significantly reduced their likelihood of falls as a result of moving more. People also experienced greater life satisfaction and felt less anxious.