Stroke recovery pioneer takes Next Steps to scale

Next Steps Rehab founder and ACORNS alumna Geraldine O’Callaghan has a global scaling vision for her post-stroke recovery care.

Geraldine O’Callaghan, who is from Granard, Co Longford, founded Next Steps Rehab in December 2024, operating the business from her home.

A physiotherapist with 20+ years of clinical experience, Geraldine recently completed a PhD focused on supporting people with stroke as they transition from hospital to home.

O’Callaghan is a graduate of the ACORNS rural women entrepreneurship programme. Funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, ACORNS supports women entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland through peer learning, mentoring and round table sessions led by experienced business owners.

The business of recovery

The idea for Next Steps Rehab grew from Geraldine’s understanding of the challenges facing rehabilitation and recovery-focused care at systems level.

Next Steps Rehab supports organisations to enhance rehabilitation, recovery-focused care and integrated models of care, particularly at key transition points in a person’s healthcare journey. The company provides consultancy, training and service development support to help organisations redesign services, strengthen workforce capability and improve outcomes for the people they serve. 

Geraldine initially began with a consultancy model, but through participating in ACORNS refined her ideas into a rehabilitation and recovery scalable whole-workforce capability programme – RehabReady. The programme includes an e-learning core module, applied workshops, a champions model and a longer-term train-the-trainer vision.

“It is designed for anyone supporting recovery, including staff working in hospitals, rehabilitation units, community services, nursing homes, care organisations and home care, as well as informal carers, helping them develop the knowledge, confidence and practical approaches needed to make everyday interactions more recovery focused.”

Geraldine says a significant milestone in her entrepreneurial journey, and during her time in ACORNS, was recognising that the challenges she was seeing across healthcare were not unique to a single service, organisation, or jurisdiction.

“I learnt that I could use my knowledge and experience to develop solutions with the potential to create impact at local, national and potentially international level.

She says ACORNS has been invaluable, providing mentoring, peer learning, encouragement and challenge. It also helped her think more strategically about business development, financial planning, intellectual property, brand protection and long-term sustainability.

Geraldine is currently working with healthcare partners to pilot RehabReady™. Her ambition is to explore scaling it nationally and beyond Ireland.

Do you have what it takes to join ACORNS?

Applications have opened for ACORNS 12, the next phase of the programme for early-stage female business founders.

Funded by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, ACORNS supports women entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland through peer learning, mentoring and round table sessions led by experienced business owners.

The latest programme results show that the combined annual turnover of the 53 participants on ACORNS 11 increased from €4.1 million to almost €6 million during the six-month programme. Nine entrepreneurs began trading for the first time during their participation, while four businesses became exporters.

ACORNS 12 will run from October 2026 to April 2027 and is open to early-stage female entrepreneurs living in rural Ireland who have generated sales no earlier than the end of June 2023. Up to 50 places are available. Participation is free of charge, supported by funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the voluntary contribution of Lead Entrepreneurs from across rural Ireland.

This year’s Lead Entrepreneurs include Alison Ritchie of Polar Ice, Geraldine Jones of Skin Formulas, Karen Kerrigan of Kerrigan’s Mushrooms, Larissa Feeney of Kinore, Mary B Walsh of Ire Wel Pallets, Orla Leahy of Ireland Chauffeur Travel and Triona MacGiolla Rí of Aró Digital Strategies.

Applications for ACORNS 12 will remain open until midnight on September 18. To apply, click here

Eligibility Criteria for participation on ACORNS

To be considered for ACORNS, applicants must:

• Have set up a new business which has generated sales no earlier than the end of June 2023 or be actively planning a new venture and have made good progress towards getting the new venture off the ground. Indicators of actively planning a business would include organising the start-up team, sourcing equipment / facilities, money saved for the start-up, writing the business plan, etc.
• They must own or part-own the business and be living in a rural area, that is in an area outside the administrative city boundaries of Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.
• If selected, applicants must be available to attend the launch Forum and first round table session on October 19 and 20, 2026. 
• They must expect to become an employer within three years.

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