It was the chair, and the third step

Wilhelmina Ross performed every clinic test adequately. She was also falling roughly once a month, in a house nobody had visited.

Home assessment finds things clinic assessment cannot: the rug, the third step, the light switch at the wrong end of the hall, the chair that is four inches too low.

What the home visit found

The fortnight after discharge is where things come apart, and the interventions that help are unglamorous: a phone call, a medicines check, one visit.

You cannot assess a home from a clinic. We keep trying, because visits are expensive and clinics are not.

Aoife Delaney, occupational therapy

A year on

Nothing here is about extending life. All of it is about what the remaining years contain, which is a different question and is asked out loud.

Two rails, one chair raised four inches, one rug removed. No falls in eleven months.