Reablement

Key aspects of reablement services

Referrals for reablement services are made by local authorities (often by a dedicated rehabilitation team) based on initial assessment in the person’s current living arrangement, with eligibility requirements often including:

• Supporting recovery after a hospital stay following an illness or operation, facilitating timely discharge.
• After a fall or short illness to prevent hospital and premature admission to long-term care.
• If an individual has started finding everyday tasks difficult and requires support in identifying new ways of doing things, maximising independent living.

The type of support provided varies on the person, their needs and their preferences, established through an assessment which focuses on outcomes rather than completing specific care tasks. Working in partnership with key stakeholders, such as nurses, occupational therapists, speech and language therapists and social workers, support could include help with:

• Activities of daily living, such as getting washed/dressed and preparing meals.
• Mobility, enabling a person to (re)learn how to move safely around their home or outdoors.
• Improving confidence and supporting participation in the community, e.g. attending chosen activities and using public transport.

As such, key elements of effective reablement (as per SCIE guidance) include:

• Individual assessment and person-centred goal setting to improve confidence and wellbeing.
• Interventions to enable engagement in meaningful activities and occupational performance (the ability to desire, recall, plan and perform the required tasks, activities and roles of living).
• Supporting and enabling risk management and risk-taking to maximise independence and choice.
• An ‘outcome focus’ to appropriately minimise the ongoing support required.

Key themes in reablement tenders

Reablement tenders often reflect similar themes to domiciliary care services, whilst acknowledging the short-term nature of support:

• Managing demand, ensuring sufficient numbers of qualified, trained and experienced support workers are available, often within a short turnaround time (e.g. within 24 hours to support an individual being discharged from hospital) and addressing the challenges associated with this.
• Providing outcomes-focussed support, enabling service users to work towards goals and ultimately live independently.
• Using a strengths-based approach, ‘doing with, not for’ and encouraging service users to do as much as they can by themselves to achieve their goals.
• Bespoke training provided to support workers delivering reablement services, confirming they understand and can apply the nuance of this kind of care/support in comparison to domiciliary care and supported living.
• Service mobilisation, detailing key timeframes, activities and milestones to demonstrate the resources, capability and capacity are in place to deliver the service from commencement, often within a tight overall timeframe.
• Partnership working and communication, evidencing how the provider will communicate with the authority to ensure referrals are accepted and managed promptly, liaise with other providers (if on a framework) to share packages where appropriate and collaboratively solve problems, and healthcare professionals to help service users access bespoke support specific to their needs.

Tender writing support

Executive Compass complete hundreds of health and social care tenders (including for reablement), and as such our bid writers have the knowledge, skills and expertise to obtain the information needed to address these topics and produce high-quality, competitive responses, to win your organisation more contracts.