A doctor decides if you are well enough to go home from hospital. When it is time to leave, hospital staff will talk with you about your first few weeks of aftercare.

Find out how you can get extra help and live at home.

Find out if you need aftercare at home

The hospital staff can talk to you about your aftercare needs before you leave hospital.

Typically, they will:

  1. Talk to you about what care you might get in the first few weeks. This could be from friends and family, the community and health and social care workers.
  2. Talk about how you will get home, your medicine and ways to get help with everyday tasks.
  3. Work out if you need aftercare in your first few weeks home. They will tell you whilst you are in hospital and will be in touch once you are home.

See the leaflet the hospital should give you before you leave.
Or learn more in a longer guide to leaving hospital by Age UK.

Transport home from hospital

The You Trust offer a Home from Hospital service to enable you to return to you home with support in place.

Get help when you get back home

It is important to have someone to help you when you get home, if you need it. You might already know somebody who can help you.

If you do not, you might be able to get someone to visit for free to check you have everything you need.

Ask charity Dorset First Point to help when you get home by phoning 0330 123 2550. They can make sure you’ve got milk and bread, have topped up utilities and have told your GP.

If you are in the Royal Bournemouth or Poole District Hospital, you can ask the British Red Cross to arrange help for once you are home. You can call them to talk about your needs on: 01235 552 665.

Get extra help at home and with errands

While you get better, you might need help at home or with errands. You might already know somebody who can help you.

If you do not, there are also people and organisations who can help you with your errands for a charge.

Find out about Age UK’s home support to help you with things like cleaning and shopping, for £17 an hour.

See who can do household chores for a fee (Help & Kindness).

If you cannot move your bins to the kerbside, use our form to let us know and our bin collection teams can sort this for you while you recover. Read more about how to request help moving your bins.

Find out what aftercare you need to get better

The health and social care team will work out if you need aftercare at home to help you to recover.

They will check if you need help doing daily tasks that you did not need help with before your hospital stay.

You will probably only need a few days of free aftercare, but it could last up to 4 weeks. It could include support from:

  • volunteers
  • reablement support workers
  • nurses
  • carers
  • social workers
  • occupational therapists
  • physiotherapists
  • speech therapists

Learning to do daily tasks again

If the team sees that aftercare will be helpful for you, they can offer you support to learn day-to-day tasks again.

This could include help to use the bathroom, to dress and to make meals.

It often takes a few days to learn to do these tasks again. As you get better, your support team will check how much care you need.

In most cases, you can learn to do everything you could before you went into hospital in less than 4 weeks.

Meet your care needs after you get better

After your recovery in the first month, you can pay for care at home to get extra help.

Get care from someone you know

Someone in your family, or a neighbour or friend, might want to do some daily tasks for you. They can help with some daily tasks alongside any carer you qualify for or decide to pay to help you.

It is important that the people caring for you get the support they need. We have a lot of support available for carers and the support they give counts as unpaid even if they receive Carer's Allowance. Read more about tools and organisations that offer help for carers.

Look for home care yourself

To get help finding and choosing care at home, you can

Ask us to look at your care needs

If you need help looking after yourself, you can ask us to look at your care needs. We will look at what daily tasks you can and cannot do.

You will need to wait for an appointment. This could be by phone. If care is not free for you, you can find care yourself without an assessment.

You will only get financial help if:

  • you have less than £23,250
  • you have needs that mean you qualify for care

Find out if you might qualify for care (Which?)
Ask us for a care needs assessment in Dorset.

You can also find out about benefits you might qualify for (GOV.UK).

Take control of money for care you qualify for

You can talk to the care manager looking at your needs about ways to get that care.

If you qualify for care, ask about managing your care budget. This gives you a direct payment so you can choose your care yourself.

Find out how getting a personal budget can help you find care.

Meet your healthcare needs after your recovery

Find out if you qualify for NHS continuing healthcare

After your recovery in the first month, you can get health care through your GP.

But if your needs cannot be met by normal health services alone, you may qualify for NHS continuing healthcare.

A nurse or other professional can check and tell you if you might qualify. If so, a full assessment of your needs will be done.

Find out more about getting a full NHS assessment of your healthcare needs after your recovery.

Managing your condition yourself, with help, after your recovery

If you have a long-term condition, there are ways you can manage better day-to-day. You can: