Hospital Homecoming

What is the Hospital Homecoming (HH) project?

We have been successful in obtaining funding through the NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) for the ‘Hospital Homecoming’ project.

This initiative supports vulnerable people leaving hospital that would benefit from low level, good neighbourly support in the early stages of returning home. We have recently extended the scope of the project to support people who might be at risk of going into hospital, to help prevent this happening. Some of the things we may be able to help service-users with are:

• Having a friendly chat on the phone with them
• Shopping for service users
• Help with errands, including picking up prescriptions
• Essential transport, e.g. to follow medical appointments
• A daily phone call to check that all is well

As with most services Covid-19 has affected how we deliver our Hospital Homecoming support.  We are now only offering face-face social visits in certain circumstances, and are not able to offer housework help at the moment.  Any transport requests will be subject to current guidelines. However please rest assured that we and our volunteers are still here to help.

Please watch this video to find out more about the project.

Expectations

• Please be mindful of who you refer to us, we are a voluntary organisation and we do not offer professional/statutory services such as:
  • Professional caring
  • Advice i.e. legal / end of life /financial
  • Medication assistance
  • Ongoing cleaning services
  • Counselling

We are offering good neighbourly support only. 

• We can only help if we have a suitable volunteer available, our service is not a guarantee so please do not use us as a replacement to statutory assistance but consider us as an added extra…we put the cherry on the cake!
• The HH project is specifically to help people in the short term after discharge from hospital, or at risk of admission. The duration of provision of help will vary, but would not be expected to extend beyond four weeks in most circumstances. Any longer-term support requested would be handled as a new request to Communicare’s existing service. The normal waiting list applies.