Frailty

Frailty is a term used by professionals to describe the loss of body resilience, which means that in the case of a physical or mental illness, an accident, or other stressful event, people living with frailty will not bounce back quickly.

People living with frailty experience greater disability, hospitalisation, care home admission, and mortality than patients who are not identified as frail. (Hale et al, 2019)

Frailty is related to the ageing process; not all older people are frail and not all individuals living with frailty are older. More about Frailty can be found on NHS England’s website: www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/ltc-op-eolc/older-people/frailty/

Outcomes for the frailty population board

The Leeds Frailty Population Board brings together partners from across city so that we can improve care, design more joined-up and sustainable frailty services and make better use of public resources. We have been working will our partners and local people to develop a series of ‘outcomes’ for frailty. These outcomes explain what we want to achieve to improve the lives of people at end of life and their carers, family, and friends. Our outcomes for frailty in Leeds are:

• Live and age well defined by ‘what matters to me’.
• Be identified, supported and have their needs assessed.
• Reducing avoidable disruption to people’s lives as a result of contact with services

By setting these clear goals that are focused on how services impact the people they serve, the board is able to better understand whether we’re really doing the right thing for the people in this population.

Insight review

We have worked with our partners to review the feedback (insight) we already have about people’s experience of frailty. This will help us understand what we already know. You can read the report below:

Download the frailty insight report (Microsoft Word version)

Public involvement workshop

We held a public involvement workshop to check the findings of our insight report, review our identified outcomes (as above), and discuss our approach to public involvement on the board.

Notes

Download the notes from the frailty public involvement workshop (Microsoft Word version)

Slides

You can download the slides from the workshop below. Please note that these might not be fully accessible and we will aim to update these as soon as possible

Download the frailty public involvement workshop slides (PowerPoint)

People’s experience of frailty services

We always want to hear about your experiences of using services, it helps us know what’s working, and where things could be improved.

There are a number of ways you can tell us about your experiences:

‘How does it feel for me?’ project by Healthwatch Leeds

Get involved in sharing your experiences by video or written testimony. Your feedback will be shared with senior decision-makers in Leeds. See people’s experiences and find out more by visiting:  https://healthwatchleeds.co.uk/our-work/how-does-it-feel-for-me/

Share your story on Care Opinion

Care Opinion is an independent place where you can share your experience of health or care services, and help make them better for everyone. You can share your own story on Care Opinion. Say what was good and what could have been better.

Find out more and tell your story