St John Ambulance Cymru will be providing falls rapid response in Pembrokeshire under a new scheme.

The charity has secured a contract to operate the new welfare and falls rapid response service in the area.

The service will see staff responding to incidents to assess and assist people, reducing the demand for emergency medical services.

The Haverfordwest-based scheme will be run in partnership with Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDUHB) and will initially run from October 1, 2024, until March 31, 2025.

The scheme will follow on from the falls response scheme which has been operated by St John Ambulance Cymru in partnership with HDUHB and Wales Ambulance Services University NHS Trust (WASUT) in the same area since January 2023.

The announcement comes as St John Ambulance Cymru marks Falls Awareness Week from September 16 to 20 alongside fellow members of the National Falls Prevention Taskforce Wales.

St John Ambulance Cymru’s head of ambulance operations, Helen Coulthard, said: "This new contract is a testament to the great service our staff have provided to people in this area of West Wales as part of the current scheme.

"To date, the scheme has attended to over 1,000 people and saved an ambulance from attending on more than 500 occasions.

"St John Ambulance Cymru continues to build on its record of providing high-quality help to patients all over the country and we look forward to continuing that work with this new scheme."

St John Ambulance Cymru's falls response schemes are in place in communities across Wales, working in partnership with WASUT, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, and the Vale of Glamorgan Council.

In 2023, these schemes, together with the current Pembrokeshire scheme, helped a total of 12,815 patients.

Falls response is one of the services provided by the charity’s ambulance operations team, who helped more than 24,000 patients in 2023, including patient transport and other schemes such as the Taith Dda Mental Health Response Service.