You Said, We Did: Community Health Services

Service user’s experiences of the Intensive Rehabilitation Team

Date Published: 07/03/2016

In January 2014, Healthwatch Barking and Dagenham were commissioned by Barking and Dagenham Clinical Commissioning Group to run workshops on the two new pilot services; the Community Treatment Team and the Intensive Rehabilitation Service. The workshops gave local people and organisations a chance to understand the new services and share their views and any concerns.

Since the event Healthwatch received concerns about the service not working as well as it should; including patients being not given the right support whilst they are at home and being made to feel that going home and receiving treatment at home would be the best option for them. Therefore the Intensive Rehabilitation Service was chosen to be part of the Healthwatch work plan. We looked at the patient experience, focusing on how the service is working and how service users feel about having treatment at home.

What service does the IRS provide?

This team consists of nurses, occupational therapy staff, physiotherapy staff and rehabilitation assistants. It aims to provide an alternative to admitting patients to an inpatient unit for rehabilitation by supporting people within their own homes where appropriate. The team helps to enable discharges from hospital and reduces the risk of a hospital admission to people in the community, by providing intensive rehabilitation in the patient’s own home.

The team complete an initial assessment, to agree the needs and goals of the patient. After this the therapy begins.

Our findings

We found that overall the service is working well, with only a few exceptions. It seems that the initially issues have been resolved as the service have evolved.

From the 74 respondents 85% were happy with having the service at home. Furthermore, over 91% of respondents indicating that they would be happy to be treated by the Intensive Rehabilitation Service again in their home.
This percentage indicates that the service is working well for those who receive it.

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Orthotic Services for Adults and Children

Date Published: 24/10/2014

The orthotic services for both adults and children in the borough of Barking and Dagenham had a history of long delays in providing patients with their required support so we decided to enquire and find out whether they are meeting the needs of the residents.

We undertook a small piece of research to see what the views of patients were.

After speaking with professionals and interviewing 17 parents or carers of children between the ages of 18 months and 15, we found that the service was excellent. Most parents expressed they had to wait no more than 2 months to receive their first orthotic support from the initial assessment and felt it had made a positive difference to their child’s life. All parents commented positively regarding the staff, said they felt listened to and given all the information they needed to feel confident about the service.

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