Healthwatch Sutton publishes its report about Frailty in Sutton
At the start of 2025, Healthwatch Sutton carried out 12 interviews with residents. It spoke to people with frailty and members of their family who acted as unpaid carers. Interviews were a mixture of in-person and over-the-phone.
Interviews focussed on three key questions:
- What is your experience of health and social care services in Sutton?
- How does frailty impact your wider life?
- What does the term 'frailty' mean to you?
Our report below explains participants' feedback and contains questions for local health and social care services. These help them think about the support they give to people with frailty in Sutton. The questions include:
- Is there a single point of information for finding out about services for frailty in Sutton?
- Should services for frailty explain to users what frailty is and what level of frailty they have? This could address people’s assumptions about frailty e.g. it only applies to end of life. Services could also clarify the difference between ‘frailty’ and other terms e.g. ‘disability’.
- Is there an issue with Medequip watches and Parkinson’s? Does the watch fail to send alerts when people with Parkinson’s fall and shake on the ground? Does this apply to people who have other tremor conditions too?
- Services for frailty are likely to have contact with unpaid carers. Do they play a role in identifying them and signposting them to relevant support?
Healthwatch Sutton presented the key findings from the project to the Sutton Frailty Board in June 2025, who added our questions to their action log.
If you have any questions or feedback about this project, we'd love to hear from you. Please contact us on:
020 8641 9540
andrew@healthwatchsutton.org.uk
Healthwatch Sutton, Granfers Community Centre, 73-79 Oakhill Road, Sutton, SM1 3AA
