This week our Team of the Week is Reablement and Home First.
The reablement teams are part of the Integrated Community Teams (ICTs) working alongside community nurses, occupational therapists and physiotherapists. Whilst managed by GHC and working seamlessly within the ICT teams, they are Gloucestershire County Council employees.
Reablement is a short term therapy-led and goals-based service supporting people following illness or injury. It aims to help the person regain skills and confidence to maximise their independence to enable them to live as well as possible. The service is delivered in the person’s own home.
When the Covid pandemic struck, we reshaped our service to add Home First – a hospital discharge pathway.
Evidence based, “home first” demonstrates that home is the best place to assess someone’s next steps in their recovery journey. Reablement workers support people for a few days whilst their therapy colleagues complete an assessment and determine next steps. For 50% of people this an episode of reablement and they seamlessly transition from Home First to Reablement.
From a standing start, Home First has become a vital part of the health and care landscape in our county. They average 35 starts each week from Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, Cheltenham General Hospital and the community hospitals – freeing up vital bed capacity. Reablement continues to take community referrals too, helping to reduce the number of people being admitted to hospital.
At the height of the pandemic, we received fabulous help from redeployed colleagues to help create extra capacity. As services have begun to recover and those colleagues have returned to substantive roles, the reablement and therapy teams have kept this amazing pace going.
There are only 104 (whole time equivalent) colleagues in Reablement working alongside Physios and OTs juggling all their other ICT commitments. And yet they’ve helped 821 people in just the last six months alone – amounting to over 2,000 visits by reablement colleagues (plus therapy input).
Thanks to the efforts of all involved, Home First has become invaluable – helping deliver better patient outcomes and improved hospital flow. Work is now underway to make it a permanent part of post-pandemic provision.
“Thank you all so much for helping my dad after he left hospital. He has really responded to your help and it has given me such needed support. I thank every one of you.” – a recent comment shared with the team.
We are currently advertising a Reablement role in the Forest of Dean. Details can be found on the Gloucestershire County Council website here:
Current Vacancies – Gloucestershire County Council
We are also advertising two other roles in the Forest of Dean, for a physiotherapist and an occupational therapist. Find the details here:
Occupational Therapist – Band 6 (https://orlo.uk/I3emR)
Physiotherapist- Band 5 (https://orlo.uk/ucbkK)
