Hospital discharge

In 1999, the Stroke Association set up a project to promote home-based occupational therapy for patients who had had a stroke and been discharged home from hospital. As part of the service evaluation, focus groups for service users and carers were set up in two of the sites to consult users about the changes in their quality of life during the period of the home therapy. A total of 11 service users and 9 carers attended the groups, representing 30% of the service users and 27% of the carers involved in the project.

The film provides an introduction to home care reablement. Reablement is a relatively new service aimed at supporting people to regain independence that may have been reduced or lost through illness or disability. The film focuses on the reablement service in the London Borough of Sutton, known as START (Short Term Assessment and Reablement Team), where we follow the experiences of two people using the service and hear from the manager and senior carer. We also hear from health economist Prof Julien Forder about new research evidence on the cost effectiveness of reablement.

This study reports on the experiences of 25 family carers of the hospital discharge planning process for their family member with a dementia. Analysis of the data indicates that the needs of family carers were not always addressed in the hospital discharge process and that discharge planning and execution is in need of improvement.