Outlands: Five Years on

The ‘Outlands Pilot’ was a joint project set up in 1992 by Devon Social Services Department and the Health Authority. It offered an intermediate setting between hospital and home. Elderly people who had been assessed as needing residential care after discharge from hospital were admitted instead to the Outlands Unit for a six‐week period of rehabilitation. The explicit aim was to rebuild people's confidence and physical independence, so that they could manage at home again. This paper reports on the success of the model and barriers to its wider use.