About the project

Helping people to leave hospital and get back to their daily lives is an important goal for health and social care services. ‘Reablement’ has been part of the mix of back-to-home services for a while now, but we still don’t know as much as we’d like about why it works and for whom, and what kind of training is available for staff and the impact of that on people using reablement services. So in this study we’ll be looking at which types, or models, of reablement are best able to help people leave hospital, by talking to a range of people using and providing reablement services, and to community organisations supporting people leaving hospital.

In England, policies to improve hospital discharge processes have been introduced to reduce high hospital occupancy and delays to people returning home from hospital. Reablement can help people transition home and resume their usual activities after a hospital stay for illness or injury. Models of reablement can differ considerably in scope - from an exclusive focus on basic activities of daily living to addressing a range of everyday and social participation activities. These models can feature different types of staffing - ranging from multidisciplinary teams to teams wholly staffed by support workers. However, there are widespread differences in models of reablement provision and more robust evidence on the outcomes of these different models of provision is needed.

The REABLE-M Project seeks to develop an evidence base on the effectiveness of these different reablement models.

Reablement has been around for over a decade, but we are unsure how well it works. We do not know if it works better for some people than others and why, or if the length of time people have support makes a difference. We also do not know much about the type of training that reablement workers get and whether this makes a difference to the experiences and outcomes of the people they are working with.

We want to find out which models of reablement help people the most when they leave hospital.

Aims

The study will evaluate which model or models of reablement are associated with better outcomes for people leaving acute hospital.

The study aims to:

Gather information from people using reablement and their carers about outcomes like quality of life, daily living, and use of services
Explore the way reablement services for people leaving hospital are organised and staffed and the helpfulness or unhelpfulness of reablement for different groups
Evaluate and compare costs and outcomes of four different staffing models of reablement identified in previous research.

Timeline

REABLE-M began in March 2024 and will run until February 2027.

Funder

The study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research.