Supporting people with arthritis to get moving and gain confidence
Saturday 12 October is World Arthritis Day, an opportunity to raise awareness of the impact of arthritis on the hundreds of thousands of people across Wales who are living with the condition.
Arthritis pain can make all aspects of daily living difficult at times and impact on an individual participating in the activities they want to do.
Cardiff and Vale UHB offers a wide range of services to help people manage painful joints. In leisure centres across Cardiff, Barry and Penarth, Rehabilitation Coaches create a safe environment for people to exercise and learn how to self-manage osteoarthritis.
For the past three years Rehabilitation Coaches Marc Sheppard and Jin Bowring (pictured) have delivered ESCAPE Pain groups in Barry and Penarth. They support people who attend the course to get moving and gain confidence.
Jin said: “When you live with an inflammatory disease I think it can become very lonely and people don’t understand because no one can see it. Being part of something is really important. In the ESCAPE group everyone gets it and they support each other. People living with arthritis can become isolated and this can give them back independence.”
Marc said: “People with arthritis can think they had better not move because they’ll be in more pain, but actually we’re going to give them confidence to move correctly, help them treat the flair up whether its back pain or knee pain and give them a bit of hope. We give them the tools to help themselves which then helps them to think they can do a bit more. It gets them out of the house and able to meet their friends.”
The group meets two times a week for six weeks. At the end of the ESCAPE Pain course people have the option to go on to follow up gym sessions, Nordic Walking, Good Boost water-based exercise programmes, Elderfit or more.
Jin said: “There is hope. You can manage it. It is difficult but you’ve just got to keep moving and try not to fear your body. Exercise doesn’t have to be complicated. We teach how to progress and regress. So, at the beginning we only ever do 30 seconds of an exercise, 10 minutes total and throughout the programme we increase it to 30-40 minutes. And we say this is how you manage it if you have a flair up.
“We’ve had a lot of self-referrals because people on the course tell their family and friends about it.”
You can self-refer to the ESCAPE Pain course for backs here and for the ESCAPE Pain course for hips and knees here.