Physiotherapy for Elderly at Home in Emsworth

There is no hospital in Emsworth. The old Victoria Cottage Hospital site on North Street is now home to Emsworth Surgery, rebuilt and reopened in 2021 — good primary care, but a GP practice rather than a hospital, with no minor injuries unit and no urgent treatment centre.

The nearest A&E is Queen Alexandra Hospital at Cosham, run by Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, around six and a half miles west along the A27. St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, run by University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust, is a similar distance the other way — but Emsworth sits in Hampshire and in the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB, so Queen Alexandra is where most people here are treated.

Once you're home, short-term support depends on which side of the boundary you live. In Emsworth it comes from Hampshire County Council. In Westbourne, Prinsted, Nutbourne and Hermitage it comes from West Sussex County Council, delivered by ECL. In practice they work the same way: free, including occupational therapists, and capped at six weeks.

The difficulty comes when that support ends but recovery hasn't finished. Progress after a stroke, a fracture or a long admission often continues for months, and six weeks rarely covers it — on either side of the county line. That's the point at which most people call us. We continue the work at home, for as long as it's genuinely helping, and we work alongside any NHS or council support already in place rather than in place of it.

Most families who call us here are in one of two situations. Either somebody has come home from hospital and the council's six weeks have run out before they were ready — or a fall has taken their confidence, and the idea of getting to an appointment and back is doing more harm than the appointment would do good.

Emsworth is the oldest place we cover in this part of Hampshire, and it is not close. A third of residents in the Emsworth area — 33.5 per cent — are aged 65 or over, against 18.4 per cent nationally. That is not an accident. People move here to retire: for the quay and the millponds, for Chichester Harbour on the doorstep, for a town small enough to walk across. It is a lovely place to grow old in, and a great many people have chosen to do exactly that.

The same things that make it lovely make it awkward once walking becomes difficult. Narrow streets and a level crossing. The A27 along the northern edge. And nothing in the town itself for treatment — no hospital, no minor injuries unit, nothing urgent. Queen Alexandra is six and a half miles west, St Richard's a similar distance east, and either one is a real expedition when you are eighty-five and recovering from a fractured hip.

We fill the gap that opens after the ward has discharged you and the reablement team has finished, when there is still real recovery left to do. We come to the house — on either side of the county line — for as long as it's genuinely helping, and we work around whatever NHS or council support you already have rather than duplicating it.