Exploring the experience of reablement

Provider and client in the garden

Introduction

This article presents:

Key Findings – Five main themes emerged

  1. The move towards wellness and reablement represents a significant change in delivery of community aged care services. This has also created disparity between what is offered by providers and expected by consumers
  2. Developing meaningful client goals can be difficult but is essential for engaging consumers in reablement interventions.  
  3. Clients often lack understanding about reablement interventions and the associated benefits. This negatively impacts participation in reablement.
  4. Maintenance of health and wellbeing outcomes after the reablement period needs to be considered.  
  5. Families/support networks want to be involved, but often feel overlooked.

Theme 1

The new approach to service delivery and managing client expectations

Theme 2

Setting meaningful goals

Theme 3

Intervention issues 

Theme 4

The reablement period 

Theme 5

Issues for carers 

Conclusions / Recommendations 

Reflection on practice

Based on the five themes emerging from this research, here are some key practice questions that individuals and organisations can ask themselves. These questions offer the opportunity to stimulate quality improvement activities and demonstrate achievements against the current and proposed Aged Care Quality Standards.
  • Do our staff understand wellness and reablement principles and practices? 
     
    Do our staff feel confident explaining wellness and reablement to clients? 
     
    Are our clients well-informed consumers? Do we provide them with information about healthy ageing and reablement? 
     
    Do our assessment and care planning practices require staff to provide information about wellness and reablement? 

  • Do our clients have an opportunity to express what is important to them? 
     
    Do our staff know how to document goals effectively? 
     
    Do our work practices ensure we provide the client with their identified goals in writing?  
     
    At the time of goal setting, do we identify dates to review progress towards the goals? 

  • Do our clients understand how our services help them achieve their goals? 
     
    Do our clients understand the roles of the people who work with them? 

  • Do our clients understand that reablement is time-limited? 
     
    Do our work practices support this understanding? 
     
    Are we good at helping clients maintain gains after a reablement period?

  • Are we good at including our clients support networks when appropriate? 
     
    Do we make referrals for carer support services if the need is identified? 

You can review the full article here: ‘Exploring the experience of reablement: A systematic review and qualitative evidence synthesis of older people’s and carers’ views’.