When older adults start to have difficulties bathing, difficulties with other activities in the home often follow. Adult social care services provide equipment or minor adaptations (sometimes known as assistive technologies) that can help older adults to get washed. These include aids like bath seats and bathlifters, and minor adaptations such as grab rails. Bathing is, however, sometimes considered to be a low priority by adult social care services.

There are also differences across services in how equipment and minor adaptations are provided and in the time that people wait for them. We think older adults might lose some of their independence whilst they’re waiting for their equipment and/or adaptations, and that those who wait longer might use more health and social care services. We need to test if this is the case.

This research programme is about the pathway for providing equipment and minor adaptations to help with bathing. This means the whole process from when an older adult with bathing difficulty contacts the council until their case is closed. We want to identify how this process could be made simpler and reduce differences between services.

We also want to:

• better understand how usable the equipment and adaptations are
• find out how they help older adults maintain independence
• establish if they reduce the need for other health and social care services
• explore the impact of waiting times on outcomes.

You can find out more about how we are going to do this in our Study Plan.