Improving reablement efficiency to help more people live independently at home

The council delivers a wide range of public services, including education, transport, public health and adult social care.

Nottinghamshire County Council is a local authority serving communities across the East Midlands of England.

Through its Maximising Independence Service, the council supports people who need short-term care and support following illness, injury or hospital discharge, helping them regain confidence and independence while reducing long-term reliance on care services.

“There’s lots of travel time involved in our current method.”

Prior to 2017, Nottinghamshire County Council’s in-house reablement service relied heavily on handwritten rotas and manual scheduling processes. Coordinators depended on local knowledge of postcodes and travel routes to manage daily schedules, making workforce planning time-consuming and difficult to optimise.

As demand for reablement services increased, the council needed a more efficient way to manage resources, improve staff utilisation and ensure care could be delivered quickly to those who needed it most.

The organisation also recognised wider challenges facing reablement services, including increasing demand, workforce pressures and the need to improve communication between frontline staff and decision-makers.

“The same staffing pool could complete more visits with greater travel efficiency.”

Nottinghamshire County Council implemented Totalmobile’s Dynamic Scheduling and Mobile Workforce Management capabilities, with full rollout across the reablement service completed by November 2018. The solution was tailored specifically to the council’s operational requirements and integrated into day-to-day service delivery.

The platform enables the council to:

By removing much of the manual effort previously associated with rota management, teams can focus more on delivering care and less on administration.

The partnership continues to evolve, with the council now implementing Referral Management to further improve communication between field workers, occupational therapists, social workers and managers through real-time information sharing.