When you get older it is reasonable to expect some degree of movement impairment. Your bones might become a little more fragile too. Both these things combine to make the risk of falling more serious. With this in mind, a relatively minor fall can have major health implications for elderly individuals.

This is played out in the figures: did you know that at least a third of people over 65 will fall, and some fall recurrently due to underlying health problems? Therefore, it is important to take active measures to make potentially lethal falls less of a problem.

For many elderly individuals, then, the home can be a dangerous environment, with staircases, bathrooms etc being a place where falls are more likely. In a bathroom area, you might install a walk-in bath so that elderly persons can simply walk into the bathtub rather than stepping over and potentially risking a fall.

But how can you reduce the chances that falling occurs on the staircase? One obvious solution is to move to another home, a bungalow where stairs aren’t an issue. If you don’t want to move into another home another solution is to install a stair lift.

Stair lifts are not necessarily as expensive as you might think. Look online and you’ll be able to source reconditioned stair lifts for relatively low prices. Also, stairlifts have a good resale value so in the future, if you do downsize you’ll be able to recoup a large part of your investment.