Physiotherapy for Elderly at Home in Havant

Havant is a town of nearly fifty thousand people with no hospital. There is no A&E, no minor injuries unit and no urgent treatment centre — the old War Memorial Hospital on Crossway is long closed. What the town has is primary and community care: Havant Health Centre on Civic Centre Road, Bosmere Medical Practice on Solent Road, and Oak Park Community Clinic, run by Hampshire and Isle of Wight Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

For anything more you travel to Queen Alexandra Hospital at Cosham, run by Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust — about five miles west along the A27, and genuinely well served by public transport, with the number 20 running roughly every ten minutes. The nearest urgent treatment centre is at Petersfield Hospital, around twelve miles north.

Once you're home, short-term support comes through Hampshire County Council's reablement service. It's free, the teams include occupational therapists as well as care staff, and it's capped at six weeks — sometimes less, depending on your situation.

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. 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.

Across Havant borough, about a quarter of residents are aged 65 or over, against 18.4 per cent for England. That average hides a split anyone who lives here would recognise: the town centre, Langstone, Denvilles and Bedhampton skew considerably older than the Leigh Park estates to the north, which were built from the late 1940s to rehouse families from bombed-out Portsmouth and are younger to this day. We visit all of it. But the people who most often need us are on the older side of that line.

Havant is not badly connected — the station runs direct to Waterloo, Victoria, Brighton and Southampton, and the number 20 gets to Queen Alexandra roughly every ten minutes. The awkwardness is more local than that. The A27 cuts straight across the south of the town and separates Langstone and lower Bedhampton from the centre, which matters a great deal more when you're eighty-two than it does at forty. And there is nowhere in Havant itself to be treated: no hospital, no minor injuries unit, nothing urgent. For a town of nearly fifty thousand, that is a long-standing gap.

We fill the part of it 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, for as long as it's genuinely helping, and we work around whatever NHS or council support you already have rather than duplicating it.