In each of the four UK nations, the CSP is taking a leading role in alliances committed to improving the provision of accessible, high-quality and person-centred community rehabilitation and recovery services.
To secure the necessary changes and investment in community rehabilitation, we need to work with all those with a shared interest in making this happen.
This is why the CSP founded, co-chairs, convenes and supports alliances in the four nations, including the Community Rehabilitation Alliance (CRA) in England – an alliance of more than 65 charities and professional bodies who are all committed to improving commissioning, planning and delivery of rehabilitation.
The Community Rehabilitation Alliance Northern Ireland, the Right to Rehab Coalition in Scotland and the Right to Rehab Campaign in Wales all share a similar make up and vision. The shared priorities of the four alliances are:
- to gain political commitment to delivering universal access to rehabilitation to meet needs
- to improve the quality of rehabilitation through new models, better data collection, planning, commissioning and delivery of services
Get involved with the community rehabilitation alliance near you
Our campaigning work
- Striving to answer the question of ‘What does good community rehabilitation look like?’ by creating best practice standards for the profession.
- Influencing the planning and commissioning of community rehabilitation.
- Campaigning to prevent the loss of key services and protecting vital spaces for rehab and recovery to take place.
- Showcasing innovative new approaches to community rehabilitation.
- Setting up hip fracture networks charged with driving up quality across the whole hip fracture pathway.
- Supporting scaling up pulmonary rehab.
Time to act
The World Health Organization has identified rehabilitation as a priority for integrated healthcare systems. It must be recognised as a central tenet of healthcare alongside prevention, health promotion, medical treatment and palliative care.
The current focus of all UK governments is to integrate care across different parts of the system, and to shift focus into primary and community services. It is time to take this opportunity and make UK health and care systems more rehabilitative as a whole.
Imperatives for improved rehab services
- Quality of life – as a society we have made significant medical advances in life-preserving treatments. We now need to place as much focus on quality of life.
- Economic – quality rehabilitation reduces demand on the most costly and intensive parts of health and social care systems, and supports people and their carers to participate economically in society. Quality rehabilitation requires investment and solutions that are creative, responsive and evidence-based to make the health and social care system more sustainable.
- Ethical – people have a right to rehabilitation so that they can participate in their local communities. The failure of current health and social care systems in the UK to meet rehabilitation needs drives the cycle of disability, poverty and health inequality. This cycle needs to be broken.
Manifestos for community rehabilitation
The CRA recently updated its core asks. This follows the publication of its 2021 manifesto. The vision spanning all key asks is to ensure that everybody can have access to high quality, personalised community rehabilitation, where and when they need it. Because quality of life shouldn't depend on your postcode.
