Reablement Care

Reablement care, also called intermediate care, is a type of short-term home care that may be necessary after a hospital stay, accident or an illness to enable you to become independent again.

Some people might also refer to reablement care as post-operative or post-surgical care, but these are slightly less specific terms as they don’t suggest an obvious end date, whereas reablement care is specifically aimed at people who will regain their independence after the period of care.

Previously, if you were being discharged from hospital and needed extra support you would most likely have been referred to a care home or been offered ongoing social care at home. Carers would have undertaken tasks for you, rather than encouraging you to be as independent as possible, and attempting to do such tasks for yourself, with support.

Now though, the focus is much more on promoting independence and encouraging people to regain the abilities that they had before their accident or illness, which is something that we have been advocates of since the very beginning.

People often choose reablement care when they are:

We have always encouraged our customers’ independence, and our carers would never ‘take over’ when a customer was able and happy to undertake something for themselves. Our carers are trained to be the best supporter our customers can have, but never to limit your independence. If a person you care for is taking longer to carry out a task than they used to, it can be tempting to do it for them.

However, all this does is limits their independence and makes them more reliant on someone else than they need to be. Consequently, we should always encourage someone to try something themselves first, while supporting them in any way we can.