Help when you leave Hospital

How can we help?
When you are about to leave hospital, you may be concerned about how you will cope. We may be able to help you by:

• arranging for staff to help you do daily tasks and provide personal care to you at home, like helping you get washed and dressed
  
• organising for you to stay somewhere for a short time before you go home, like a rehabilitation centre
  
• giving advice about support that other organisations can offer
  
• giving advice to anyone who helps look after you, like a family member or friend.

Before this support can be offered though, we need to do an assessment first.

What is an assessment?  
We meet you in hospital to find out more information, so we can understand your situation. We look at how your independence and day to day life has been affected by your illness or condition.

We also need to find out if you qualify for support, because unfortunately we can't help everyone. We use guidelines set by the Government to decide who is in most need. To find out more about this, see our leaflet 'Fair Access to Care Services'- click here to download it.

The assessment should find out what your strengths and abilities are, as well as what support you need. We want to listen to your views.

Who are our staff? 
We work for the city council and used to be called Social Services. We have two teams based at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire:

Screening Team- the ward staff may ask you if you would like our help. If you say yes, they will tell our screening team.

This team will gather all the information they need, to see if you qualify for our help. If you do, this team will either come and do an assessment or pass your case onto our Complex Team.

Complex Team- they will continue your assessment if your care needs are more complicated.

We also have teams based at Bucknall Hospital, who work with people with more long-term needs and may be in hospital for longer, such as people who have had strokes- click here for more information about this team.

What happens after your assessment?
You will be given a written support plan. This confirms what support you will receive and gives details about these services. You will also be told about any contributions you may need to make towards the cost of this care.

When you have been discharged from hospital, your support plan will be reviewed after four to six weeks by our reviewing officers.

For our opening times and contact details, click here.