Community rehabilitation alliance: Community care manifesto (3 November 2021)

Summary

This manifesto was created by the Community Rehabilitation Alliance, a collective of 50 charities, trade unions and professional bodies coming together to call on all political parties to ensure there is equal access to high quality community rehabilitation services for all patients.

Content

The manifesto calls for equal access to high-quality, person centred community rehabilitation. It highlights current gaps in services, discusses the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and states that failing to provide equal access to community rehabilitation falls short of the NHS constitution.

It identifies the negative impact of inadequate community rehabilitation services, including:

• reduced quality of life and independence for people with long term conditions.
• increased risk of death for cardiovascular disease patients.
• increased emergency hospital admissions for falls.
• increased overall costs for the NHS (for example, in treating traumatic brain injury).
• increased healthcare inequalities.

The manifesto argues that community rehabilitation must be radically reformed to:

• be fully accessible, helping people overcome any barriers they face.
• be truly person-centred, tailored to meet individuals’ multiple physical and psychological needs.
• be seen as an equal priority to domiciliary care, nursing and residential care in local authority adult social care planning and provision.
• embrace social prescribing.
• harness new technology and innovation seen in the response to the pandemic to provide a wider menu of options.