Abstract
Reablement – or restorative care – is a central feature of many western governments’ approaches to supporting and enabling older people to stay in their own homes and minimise demand for social care. Existing evidence supports this approach although further research is required to strengthen the certainty of conclusions being drawn. In countries where reablement has been rolled out nationally, an additional research priority – to develop an evidence base on models of delivery – is emerging. This paper reports a prospective cohort study of individuals referred to three English social care reablement services, each representing a different model of service delivery. Outcomes included healthcare‐ and social care–related quality of life, functioning, mental health and resource use (service costs, informal carer time, out‐of‐pocket costs). In contrast with the majority of other studies, self‐report measures were the predominant source of outcomes and resource use data. Furthermore, no previous evaluation has used a global measure of mental health. Outcomes data were collected on entry to the service, discharge and 6 months post discharge. A number of challenges were encountered during the study and insufficient individuals were recruited in two research sites to allow a comparison of service models. Findings from descriptive analyses of outcomes align with previous studies and positive changes were observed across all outcome domains. Improvements observed at discharge were, for most, retained at 6 months follow‐up. Patterns of change in functional ability point to the importance of assessing functioning in terms of basic and extended activities of daily living. Findings from the economic evaluation highlight the importance of collecting data on informal carer time and also demonstrate the viability of collecting resource use data direct from service users. The study demonstrates challenges, and value, of including self‐report outcome and resource use measures in evaluations of reablement.
Highlights
Over recent years reablement – or restorative care – has increasingly featured within some western governments’ approaches to addressing the care and support needs of older people (Aspinal, Glasby, Rostgaard, Tuntland, & Westendorp, 2016)
Descriptive analysis of outcomes data collected from a cohort of individuals living in three localities in England and receiving reablement from their local reablement service aligns with existing evidence of the positive impacts of reablement
It suggests that to fully evaluate reablement and understand the mechanisms of change, a range of outcome domains should be assessed over an extended time period
Summary
Over recent years reablement – or restorative care – has increasingly featured within some western governments’ approaches to addressing the care and support needs of older people (Aspinal, Glasby, Rostgaard, Tuntland, & Westendorp, 2016). In England, reablement comprises an assessment by a specialist practitioner during which person‐centred goals are co‐created with the service user This is followed by a time‐limited period (typically 4–6 weeks) in which trained workers conduct home visits in order to support the achievement of these goals through the regaining of functional skills and/or identifying new ways of carrying out their activities of daily living. This paper reports a prospective cohort study of older people receiving reablement in England It was commissioned by the English government's National Institute for Health Research who issued a call for proposals to investigate different models of service delivery. Objectives; it did generate new and important evidence on a range of outcomes associated with reablement and the use of self‐ report measures in this context
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