Nurturing
Our
Retired
Citizens
Replication Guide
Nurturing |
|
Replication Guide |
Fall Prevention Assessments
To decrease accidents in senior’s homes by making suggestions for home modifications and installing grab bars when necessary.
A licensed occupational therapist provides a complete assessment of safety issues in seniors’ homes and makes recommendations to remedy unsafe conditions. NORC arranged to have grab bars installed when indicated. NORC helped with the cost of installation.
Provide options for health promotion, exercise, volunteering and other vital aging activities.
Seniors who have the evaluation, and their children, who have the assurance that their parents are safe at home.
When a person calls to schedule an appointment for an evaluation, the project coordinator calls the occupational therapist with the name and phone number of the client to schedule the appointment. The therapist schedules the appointment within a two-week period of time. After the assessment, the therapist writes a report and makes recommendations to the senior for any changes that should be implemented. That report is sent to the senior and to the NORC project coordinator. If recommendations were made for the person to have any physical changes made to the home, such as grab bars, the seniors informed as to how much financial assistance would be available for them.
The decision to do home safety assessments was made by the Senior Consumer Advisory Committee. We hired three companies to do an assessment at the same house for the same person. Then we compared the results and evaluated the seniors’ reaction to each about the person doing the assessment. We chose the assessment that was the most comprehensive and had the clearest follow-up report with the best suggestions for improvements.
The Senior Consumer Advisory Committee named the assessment, Home Safety Assessments. The barriers to this project include A) Participants did not want us to tell their children if we found something that needed to be fixed; B) Participants thought they would be forced to fix something that they could not afford to fix; C) Participants thought they would be forced to sell their home before they were ready to sell; and D) Participants feared a bad score or grade. The Senior Consumer Advisory Committee decided to rename the assessments to Fall Prevention Assessments to see if this made it easier for seniors to accept them. Because of these barriers, the Consumer Advisory Committee recommended that a self-guided assessment be designed and incorporated into the Senior Resource Directory.
Future sustainability will be achieved either by charging seniors for the evaluation or by accessing grant money from the county that has a vested interest in keeping seniors out of the hospital and in their homes for as long as possible.
Marketing PR and Dissemination
We placed ads in the local newspaper, in the local Senior Program newsletter, the NORC newsletter, City newsletter and we had a NORC Health and Wellness lecture on Home Safety and the Assessment. When broadcast on Cable TV, contact information was included for seniors to arrange for an assessment.
This is a valuable tool to help seniors remain independent for as long as possible. We have not overcome the barriers to this program at this point; however, we don’t yet know how many people have used the self-guided assessment.
<<< Return to Table of Contents