The FIREFLI study v1.0
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Do Safe and Well Visits delivered by the Fire and Rescue service reduce falls and improve quality of life among older people? A randomised controlled trial (FIREFLI)
IRAS ID
280995
Contact name
Sarah Cockayne
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of York
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
3 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Background:
The Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) routinely carry out around 670,000 safety and well visits (SWV) each year in people’s homes. The aim of these visits is not only to reduce risk of fire but address wider issues related to health and wellbeing, including falls prevention, smoking cessation, winter warmth advice and social isolation. Falls can be a serious issue for older people. About 1 in 10 people suffer a serious injury after falling, which costs the NHS £2.3 billion a year to treat. There is some evidence that interventions to improve home safety are effective at reducing falls. What we don’t know is whether SWV delivered by the FRS reduce falls, improve quality of life and if they are good value for money.Design:
We will recruit 1156 people aged 70 years and over, from lists of people held on FRS databases to take part in this study. Everyone will receive a falls prevention leaflet from Age UK and usual care from their GP and/or other healthcare professionals. Participants will be divided into two groups; half of them will have a SWV at the start of the study; the other half will receive it after 12 months, when they have finished the study. Which group a participant is in will be decided by chance. Everyone will be asked to fill in monthly falls calendars for 12 months and four postal questionnaires over a 12-month period to collect information about falls, quality of life, how often they’ve used NHS services and if they are doing any activities which makes them more likely to have a fire in their home. We will interview participants and members of the FRS to find out if the visits were acceptable to older people and the FRS.LAY SUMMARY OF STUDY RESULTS:
Why did we do this trial?
Fire and rescue services in England offer home fire safety visits to people in the community. The visits include a fire risk assessment, recommendations to prevent fires and advice on topics such as preventing falls and stopping smoking. We wanted to find out if these visits reduced the number of falls older people had, improved their quality of life, what they thought about the visits and if they were good value for money.What did we do?
We tried to recruit people to the trial. However, we faced significant challenges in setting up and running the study. In the end, we only recruited 63 people. Half were immediately offered a home fire safety visit and the other half were due a visit 12 months later. We collected information about whether people fell each month and other health outcomes. We interviewed people who received a visit and members of the fire and rescue service who delivered them to find out what they thought about the visits.What did we find?
There were significant delays in getting approvals to run the study and getting addresses of people to mail invitation packs to. We planned to enrol 1156 people, but this was not possible, so we had to stop the study. This meant we didn’t have enough information to be able to tell if the home visits reduced falls, improved quality of life or were good value for money. However, of note, in the interviews, people said they found the visits a positive experience, felt they were reassuring and found the advice useful.What does this mean?
Although we did not complete the study, the lessons learned from running it should help other researchers to navigate future research studies in this area.REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
21/WM/0050
Date of REC Opinion
27 Apr 2021
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion