Commander and Rooprai (Psychiatric Bulletin October 2008, 32, 380- 383) draw attention to the importance of specialist rehabilitation teams for successful resettlement from acute hospital wards.
Experience with one such team [ Newham rehabilitation service ] in another socially deprived, multi-ethnic inner-city area over more than 20 years fully supports their conclusions.

Rehabilitation teams can ensure resettlement is more than freeing beds.
Over this period, the team has supported preparation-for-discharge houses
that provide humane alternatives to wards and are a portal to long- term rehabilitation and recovery.

Initially situated on a hospital campus and later in the community,
they enhance domestic and social skills and inform assessments and patient choice.

The network of staffed and supported housing (increasingly the latter) to which their residents have access
is also actively supported by the rehabilitation team,
greatly easing transitions
and ensuring the continuity that is now often confined to such teams

In addition, the team runs a combined group and individual out- patient clinic for resettled and other long-term patients.
This facilitates its other clinical and support work, enlightens staff-patient relationships
and adds a peer support dimension that is also evident in the social club that developed from it.
The extra options these provide are clearly enjoyed by even the most withdrawn patients,
who are particularly at risk of isolation ‘in the community’.

Official commitment to rehabilitation teams has nationally been intermittent and variable and needs to be settled and explicit.

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