To help more people return home from hospital and live more independently, we need to expand Falkirk Council’s Care at Home Team.

This larger group of staff will then be grouped into small teams of care at home workers supported by a senior carer. The Falkirk Council team will have three functions:

• Reablement care: This will be their main focus, supporting people new to the service or those leaving hospital. The team will provide temporary support to help people increase their independence. Following this period, people would move to a different local care provider, unless they have complex care needs.
• Short-term care: Responding to short term care needs, the team will also provide temporary care at home. This support is needed when an individual’s usual care is not available. By providing this temporary support, we can prevent emergency care home placements, hospital admissions and offer support if someone’s preferred provider is temporarily unable to provide care.
• Care at home: While the Falkirk Council team will primarily focus on temporary and reablement support, it will also provide care at home where enhanced support is required or where needs cannot be met by other providers. Most people will receive their ongoing care at home support from other local providers.

There are a range of ways local services are working to improve the hospital discharge process and the support available in the community.

Falkirk Council’s Care and Support at Home Service is already moving towards becoming a reablement focused service. So far, staff have volunteered to complete extra training to increase the amount of reablement support in the local area. All staff will complete this training by summer 2026.

To make full use of the reablement training, where people have chosen to allow Falkirk Council to arrange the most appropriate care provider for them, we have reviewed some care packages and transferred their care to a different local provider. This has allowed the Falkirk Council team to focus more on reablement and round the clock care for people coming out of hospital. This ensures people are accessing the right care from the right place.

Reablement support is important because it improves people’s mobility, confidence, and ability to complete daily tasks. This means people can live more independently with less help from care providers. Reablement support is particularly helpful for people returning home from a hospital stay.

Some key facts about the effectiveness of reablement care include:

• Reablement improves independence, reduces reliance on long-term care, and enhances quality of life.
• Reablement support can reduce the likelihood of a care home admission.
• Reablement support can reduce the need for long-term care at home support.
• People in Falkirk who received reablement support after a hospital visit were able to reduce their ongoing care needs by up to 75%. This meant they need less help to stay at home, and the Partnership spends less money providing their ongoing care.
• Research from Nottingham University shows people have better mobility and quality of life 3-6 months after receiving reablement support. This is more likely if occupational therapists were involved in the reablement care.

Each month, around 120 people in the Falkirk area are discharged from hospital. We want everyone leaving hospital to have the opportunity to receive reablement support to recover faster and better following a hospital stay.

The changes proposed by this service review will aim to:

• help more people receive the right care in the right place.
• support more people to live in their own home and do as many tasks for themselves as they can.
• give staff more opportunities to develop their career, improve job satisfaction, and encourage staff to stay with Falkirk Council.
• help to deliver support within the budget available for local health and social care services.