Reablement care is a focused service that helps individuals maintain or regain independence at home (1). The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 requires local authorities to provide these services for free for up to six weeks (2,7).
The Welsh Government’s “A Healthier Wales” strategy emphasises integrated health and social care (8). It encourages local authorities and health boards to work together to deliver reablement services (2,9). The Welsh Government’s 2022 All Wales Rehabilitation Framework (10) also supports these goals, and recent policies (2023) focus on improving care for older people, expanding reablement, reducing hospital admissions, and supporting recovery at home (11,12).
There is currently limited data available on who accesses reablement care. Although some data is reported at a local authority level, each local authority still stores detailed individual-level data separately. This individual data is essential for understanding the health of those accessing reablement care and how they use health services.
In this project, all 22 local authorities (LAs) in Wales were invited to link their reablement data with other health datasets in the SAIL Databank. Only three LAs—Bridgend, Neath Port Talbot, and Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT)—had enough resources and data to participate. This report includes only Bridgend and RCT, as they had data available at publication.
Linking these datasets provides a unique opportunity to understand those accessing reablement care better, helping local authorities manage service demands and gain insight into how individuals access these services.
The study aimed to explore reablement care in Wales by describing the characteristics and health of people who access these services at the local authority (LA) level. This was achieved by securely linking reablement data from LAs with demographic and healthcare information in the SAIL Databank. A group of people who did not access reablement care was also created for comparison.
Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) groups and participating LAs highlighted the importance of understanding who accesses reablement care, identifying any inequalities, and improving service delivery. Although LAs collect data, they often do not analyse it based on demographics and do not have the resources to link it with health data. Using these data makes the descriptive analysis from this study particularly valuable.