Reablement, Rehabilitation, Recovery: Everyone’s business

In March 2023, we published Joining the dots: A blueprint for preventing and managing frailty in older people. This set out seven touchpoints of care that should be available to older people, as and when they need them and 12 recommendations to systems. One of the recommendations is specifically around the provision of rehabilitation and one of the touchpoints is ‘Integrated urgent community response, reablement, rehabilitation and intermediate care.’  

In this new document, we take a deep dive into this Blueprint recommendation, looking at the evidence behind the provision of rehabilitation for older people and highlighting examples of best practice from across the UK and internationally. We argue that rehabilitation should be a component of virtually all care for older people, across all care settings, and that there is no such thing as ‘no rehabilitation potential.’ 

This document has been led by Professor Anne Hendry, Honorary Professor at the University of the West of Scotland and Senior Associate at the International Foundation for Integrated Care and a group of BGS members from across the UK and across disciplines have contributed to drafting the document. We hope that BGS members, commissioners and system leaders will find it useful in planning rehabilitation services for older people in their communities.