Help leaving hospital
If you need more support
Following your admission to hospital, if you or the staff treating you think that you need more support than you had before going into hospital, you will be offered an assessment of your need by the hospital social work team. They can arrange for appropriate services to be provided on a temporary or permanent basis.
If returning home or rehabilitative treatment would not be the best option, you may want to consider moving to a care home. The social worker undertaking your assessment will help make arrangements if a care home placement best meets your needs.
If you can fund your own placement but feel you or your family need help in making the arrangements, the Placement Co-ordinator (an NHS employee) will be available to help you. Ward staff can arrange for you or your family to meet with the Placement Co-ordinator.
Temporary/transitional care after leaving hospital
Sometimes it might be difficult for you to finalise your discharge plans because, for example, you have found a suitable home but it has no vacancy.
In these circumstances you will be assisted to move into a temporary setting until your preferred choice of home becomes available. The rules for temporary care home charges are different from the rules for permanent care home charges. For more information, please contact the Financial Assessment Team.
Hospital care in England: what you need to know before, during and after your stay
This guide published by Counsel and Care is about what you might need to think about before you go into hospital and what may happen during your hospital stay. It also covers what may happen during and after your discharge from hospital to make sure that you get any care and support you are assessed as needing at home or elsewhere.
Hospital care in England: what you need to know before, during and after your stay 
(PDF: 372KB) (external link)
Barnet Intermediate Care Team
This is a jointly funded multi disciplinary team between NHS Barnet (external link) and Adult Social Care and Health. There is a single point of access to refer people who can benefit from rehabilitation after discharge from hospital, or for people in the community, to avoid admission to hospital.
The team offers services including occupational therapy, physiotherapy, social care and a rehabilitation care worker to support clients with activities of daily living, speech and language therapists, and nursing.
There are residential care beds for those who require more intensive rehabilitation (at Delfield Court) or community hospital beds if clients need nursing care plus rehabilitation. The aim of the service is to enable clients to achieve their optimum level of functioning in order to live independently.
- Tel: 0845 389 0940
- Fax: 0845 389 0941
- Open: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm (referrals and therapists), Monday-Sunday 8am-10pm (community rehabilitation services)
Home from Hospital Service, British Red Cross
The British Red Cross offers short-term assistance with shopping, collecting pensions and prescriptions, checking phone messages, visits and companionship to Barnet residents leaving the Royal Free Hospital and Barnet Hospital. If you are anxious about going home and/or feel you need a little practical assistance, ask the ward staff to refer you.
- Tel: 020 8216 5040 (Barnet Hospital)
- Tel: 020 8216 5040 (Royal Free Hospital)
- Open: Monday-Friday, 9am-5pm
Returning Home Scheme
This scheme, run by the Barnet Care and Repair Agency, will carry out essential repair works or adaptations to your home to ensure you can be discharged home as safely and independently as possible with the minimum of delays.
Following your assessment and planned discharge agreement, your occupational therapist or social worker will contact the scheme on your behalf to arrange the necessary work. The work will be carried out by suitable, competent contractors who have been specially selected to do your work whether it is to clear trip hazards in your home, move your bed downstairs or to repair your boiler.
You will not be charged for most minor repairs or adaptations to make your home safe, warm and comfortable when you return from hospital. However, you may need to pay for more major work such as electrical rewiring or full central heating or roof repairs but the Care and Repair Agency will help you find funding and organise these works should you wish to proceed with them once you have settled at home.
- Tel: 020 8359 7462
- Fax: 0870 889 6793
- Open Monday-Thursday 9am-5.15pm, Friday 9am-5pm
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Email this pageLast modified by: Neha Shah on 01/09/2011