Help after an accident or a hospital stay

Information about the short-term support available to help people return home safely, rebuild skills and improve mobility and confidence after an accident or a hospital stay.

Help going home from hospital

The Northumberland Home Safe Hospital Discharge team is an integrated health and social care service which supports patients who have been assessed as needing help leaving hospital. 

The team which is based in all Northumberland hospitals includes social workers, social work support assistants, discharge nurses and occupational therapists who work together to support discharge.  

We work closely with the Homesafe service to enable them to support in the first few days after discharge to help people rebuild their confidence and rediscover their independent livings skills after a stay in hospital.  
 

Our Home Safe Support Team 

Reablement workers link closely with the Home Safe service to support patients in the first few days after discharge. 

The team works with patients in their home environment to ensure they have appropriate equipment and support in place after a stay in hospital.  

The team can also complete initial tasks such as emergency shopping, preparing a hot meal and putting on heating.   

The reablement workers can provide short term reablement to support the patient to complete tasks such as washing, dressing, preparing a snack/meal etc. The aim is to help rebuild skills and improve mobility and confidence. 
 

Short-term support after a serious accident or illness

Our short-term support service (STSS) provides a short period of support to people in Northumberland following a serious accident or illness to help them regain their ability to carry out a range of day-to-day tasks. The service includes therapists and reablement workers.

STSS reablement workers can, where necessary, provide help to get dressed, to wash or with meals; but they will always be thinking about ways to help people to be able to do the task again themselves, either by working with them to try different ways of carrying out a task or by asking one of the therapists in the service to work with them.  
 
Examples of the ways we may be able to help you include:  

• Advising about equipment you could buy which would make tasks easier, or in some cases supplying equipment from our equipment loan service.  
• Arranging small adaptations to your home, such as “grab rails”.  
• Teaching you techniques and demonstrating use of equipment which will help you    prepare your own meals.   
• Helping you try different techniques for dressing and managing your personal care.  
• Helping you practice exercises to improve your balance when walking around your home and demonstrating and helping you to practice safe ways of using mobility equipment outdoors.   

We usually work with people for just a few days, but sometimes it can be a few weeks if they would benefit from an extended programme of rehabilitation at home.  
 
Some people only need a single visit, for example from an occupational therapist to organise getting equipment to help them live at home.  
 
It is usual for the length of visits to reduce during the period we are working with people as they start to get more independent.  
 

Contact us

You can contact us via Onecall on 01670 536400 
 
Or email: onecall@northumberland.gov.uk   
 
If you have speech or hearing difficulties, you can use Relay UK to contact us by dialling 018001 01670 536400 you can find more information about Relay UK here.