START

Our Short Term Assessment and Reablement Team (START) provides a number of services:

  • Reablement
  • Rapid response
  • Hospital admission avoidance 
  • Bridging service               
  • Domiciliary service

The reablement approach supports people to do things for themselves. It is a 'doing with' service, in contrast to traditional home care which tends to be a 'doing for' service. Reablement services help people to retain or regain their skills and confidence so that they can learn to manage again after a period of illness.

The service is provided for anyone who will benefit from it. It's very common for someone to need only one to two weeks of reablement with the START Team. Following a period of reablement, if a long-term package of care is required, there may be an assessed cost associated with this service following a financial assessment.

The START rapid response service aims to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and safely support people in their own home. This is a joint partnership between Shropshire Community Health Trust and Shropshire Council. Nurses, care coordinators and support workers across both organisations work together to ensure a seamless service that provides a rapid assessment, treatment and care programme of support to stabilise and support people during an acute episode of ill health. 

The START admission avoidance service aims to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions. Short-term support will be arranged after a person becomes suddenly ill, preventing the person from going into hospital whilst they're supported to regain independence.
 
The START bridging service supports people to be safely discharged from hospital while they're waiting for their previous care provider to restart their existing package of care.
 
The START domiciliary service is a chargeable interim service which supports people with a short-term package of care while they're waiting for their long-term provider to produce a package of care.

START has a commitment to supporting positive outcomes and is a compassionate, person centred service, where we focus on the promotion of wellbeing, through setting meaningful reablement goals for the person’

What you can expect from the START Team

  • Support workers who are highly trained and skilled to stand back, observe, encourage and prompt you to learn new skills or relearn skills you may have lost
  • Assistance to continue to live as you wish 
  • To enable you to do ordinary activities like cooking meals, washing, supporting independence with medication, dressing, moving about the home and going out
  • You may be shown a different way to carry out tasks to achieve independence, such as putting the weaker arm with the least amount of movement into the sleeve of a top first
  • START workers may also support you to reconnect to your local community by providing information, as well as by promoting confidence in outdoor mobility and the use of public transport
  • START can assess, prescribe and deliver low-level equipment such as commodes, shower chairs, perching stools, toilet frames and bed levers 

START is committed to promoting the health and safety of all the people who use the service and its employees. We politely ask all service users receiving our service who smoke at home to refrain from smoking preferably one hour before the arrival of the START support worker's visit, and to refrain from smoking for the duration of the visit.

Mission statement

‘Our vision is to provide a caring, strength based service to every person in Shropshire in need of our support.'

How to contact START

  • During office hours (Monday to Thursday 8:45am-5pm, Friday 8:45am-4pm) please call 01743 254875
  • Outside of these hours (7am-8:45am and 5pm-10pm including weekends and bank holidays) please call 01743 399047
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