FEATURE REHABILITATION
12,500 sq
loca
Neighbourhood teams an
rehabilitation delivered
How community rehabilitatio
developing where you are
dependent on your area’s
demography and policy d
no small wonder, then, that a distinct
emerging in the vast yet diverse Scot
NHS Highland is the largest health
Scotland, with working practices that
within its own 12,500-square mile ter
working in urban Inverness and rural
likely to need different approaches.
Some of the recent changes have
by the Scottish Government’s drive to
working (see side panel). To deliver on
team in Inverness initially looked at th
model of holistic community care dev
Netherlands as a way to enable staff
and take ownership for their work.
But Carole Mitchell, the occupatio
professional lead based in Inverness,
keen on introducing the model whole
concerned that if we created a pure B
model that we would just deliver care
someone has had a crisis,’ she says.
worked for many years to embed rea
how we work here and it was really im
wasn’t lost.’
Instead, she decided to locate an
therapist in each of the new neighbou
welding reablement and rehabilitation
neighbourhood model.
It was not an initially popular decis
occupational therapists were worried
going to be split up into separate team
Carole.
Pushing for change
But the team gradually realised that t
ways of working would enable them
a real difference in promoting reablem
rehabilitation. Single points of contac
16 OTnews June 2020