"Enablement (sometimes called reablement) is about helping people re-learn skills or develop new skills to become more independent and improve their quality of life"
Sometimes services providing care adopt a caring or "doing to" approach which means the resident can lose their functional skills and become very dependent. This in turn affects quality of life, physical health morale and self esteem.
In Perth & Kinross, we are promoting a positive culture where the ethos of care is built around the resident and they can have the opportunity and confidence to re-learn and regain some of the skills which they may have lost and develop new skills to increase their function, independence and physical and meaningful activity opportunities. To enable this there needs to be a shared commitment to ideas, values and goals by residents, staff and relatives. The P&K Care Home Enablement Booklet (PDF, 555 KB) is issued as a supplement to staff training.
Activities are just the everyday things that we do. They can include:
- Getting washed and dressed in the morning;
- Making/having your breakfast;
- Making the bed;
- Enjoying leisure pursuits;
- Walking and increasing steps/distance.
Graded activities
All activities can be broken down into smaller parts so that resident can build upon these until the full activity is achieved. To do this we need to understand the components needed to perform an activity, for example:
- Physical demands - type of movement, posture, coordination, energy, strength and effort;
- Sensory/perceptual - visual, tactile, proprioceptive;
- Cognitive, concentration, intellectual ability, abstract thought;
- Emotional, is it stimulating or motivational;
- Environmental - space, equipment, materials;
- Time
- Safety
See examples of an activity broken down:
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