Paths for All

Residents, patients, and staff in healthcare settings benefit greatly from environments that enable physical activity and movement. 

Paths for All (PfA) has worked with care homes and hospitals across the country to adapt external spaces to support safe movement for everyone. Centred in the Perth and Kinross area, PfA has kindly shared success stories of how healthcare settings benefit from strength and balance intuitive pathways and meaningful environments that encourage moving around. 

Hospital Example

Paths for All installed strength and balance movement posts throughout one healthcare setting which greatly impacted those currently receiving care there. One patient, who recently was a new amputee and uses a wheelchair, remarked on how these posts have positively changed his life. 

“[He] love[ed] the exercises and posts in the garden and in the ward too. It was brilliant as it helped his strength and endurance. He also identified that there was one section of the path that wasn’t accessible and with help from Paths for All we were able to make the adjustments required and now the path is fully accessible.”

Modifications within healthcare settings work similarly to improve the stability of those who need support. PfA has supported additions of other mobilising environmental elements, such as indoor handrails, anti-slip pathways, newly surfaced pathways or circuits as well as nature interpretation posts and nature connectedness items which encourages engagement and moving around.  

Lasting Benefits

These concrete adjustments to lived environments make lasting change for patients and residents. They cultivate confidence and ease of movement for residents, which in turn boosts both mental and physical health. PfA is dedicated to supporting the mechanisms that repurpose environments which make them safer to traverse. Seen below, people have benefitted greatly from these changes. 

“We have long corridors so have put up the grab rail and spaced the strength and balance posters out along it. People walk along and work their way through the exercises moving from one poster to another. The grab rail is good for holding onto for balance and for the hip exercises.” -Care Home 

“The posts in the garden have made such a difference. Residents have told us that it makes the walk more interesting – so it’s not just going round in a loop now.” -Care Home 

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Whole Systems Approach 

Paths for All’s work is important to the Whole Systems Approach (WSA) because it exemplifies how important it is to restructure or repurpose environments that enable active movement for everyone. The WSA promotes the concept that all sectors need to collaborate to promote movement for everyone within society. This encompasses a multidisciplinary method, which includes not just excellent physical activity programmes but modification of environments externally and internally. PfA directly helps to foster these environments that support movement for everyone. Seen here, the third sector plays a key role in the development of built environments.

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