Re-ablement for older community-living older people: Evidence-based interventions involving occupational therapists are needed

Background: Re-ablement is an approach aiming at improve home-care services for older people and to enable and support active engagement in everyday activities. An important responsibility for occupational therapists (OT) is... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
Re-ablement is an approach aiming at improve home-care services for older people and to enable and support active engagement in everyday activities. An important responsibility for occupational therapists (OT) is to educate and support home care personnel, by coaching, mentoring and teaching them to work together with the clients to support their management of everyday activities as far as possible. Within the OT profession there is a lot of knowledge about everyday rehabilitation based on practical experience, but the knowledge is scarce on the scientific evidence for the type of service named re-ablement. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there is scientific evidence for re-ablement for community-living older people.
Method:
A systematic literature review was accomplished by means of database searches. The final sample comprised eight original scientific publications published in English during the period 2000-2014.
Results:
The findings were summarized in three areas: terms and definitions, description of interventions and interventions effects. Some positive effects of re-ablement were reported, such as less use of home-care, higher likelihood to live at home, improved ADL, improved health-related quality of life and physical health, improved physical activity and lower costs compared to conventional home-care.
Conclusion / Application to Practice:
Re-ablement has the potential to support older people in need of help and support in everyday life. More research is needed and OT skills are well placed to contribute to the innovative development of home-care targeting older community-living older people.