By Edith Macintosh, Head of Improvement Support

I had a strong belief the Care About Physical Activity (CAPA) improvement programme would be successful and six months into it all the signs are that I am right.

What’s always astonishing to me about improvement is that something which seems quite small can make a massive difference. In fact in some cases it can be transformational. I am hearing personal stories from many different people across the eight partnerships involved that evidence that.

I am the programme lead for CAPA, so I designed the programme and have the real privilege of providing direction and leadership to the brilliant team of managers and advisers, and for the improvement work.

This work really began in 2014 when the CAPA resource pack was launched for care homes for older people across Scotland. The aim of this was to help care professionals to increase opportunities for people experiencing care to move more. Very quickly evaluation told us that where it was used well it did make a difference and people experiencing care were enabled and encouraged to increase their levels of physical activity. This led to funding from the Scottish Government to run the CAPA programme till October 2018 and what a fantastic and exciting opportunity this is.

I am passionate about improvement generally but especially improvement that gives people, no matter where they live or what age they are, the chance to live life to the full, as they would choose and to live it well. CAPA absolutely does that.

Atul Gawande talks about (in my favourite book by him called ‘Being Mortal’) “sustaining the value of existence” and “being the authors of our own story”, powerful words which if put in to action have powerful outcomes for people. The improvement work that care professionals are doing as part of CAPA has the power to open up opportunities for older people to continue to be who they are, to feel valued, have purpose and feel well ... to write their own story. This is happening now – older people and care professionals are doing things they’ve not done for a long time, have never done before and in some cases never thought they would and guess what – they feel so much better because of it. You will read many inspirational stories about this in the CAPA updates on The Hub website and I hope it inspires you to move more, sit less and grab life with both hands! Look out for our new website that will be launched in the New Year.

Atul Gawande in his book also says that “we need people in the world who change imaginations” I believe the CAPA team are doing that and encouraging everyone they are working with to be these people – you could be that person too?