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People, pets and care homes: a story of ambivalence
- Authors:
- SMITH Randall, JOHNSON Julia, ROLPH Sheena
- Journal article citation:
- Quality in Ageing and Older Adults, 12(4), 2011, pp.217-228.
- Publisher:
- Emerald
The aim of this article is to examine the history of pet ownership and its relationship to well-being in later life, and to compare current and past attitudes, policies and practices with regard to the issue of pet ownership in communal residential settings for older people. The article includes a review of the literature on pets and older people. It discusses pets and health and well-being, pets and older people, pet visiting schemes and institutional care, and personal and communal pets in care homes. It also draws on new data from research conducted by the authors, which compared archived material on residential homes for older people visited in the late 1950s as part of a study by Peter Townsend (The Last Refuge) with findings from revisiting a sample of these homes 50 years later. The research included observation and interviews with managers and residents, and responses indicated ambivalent attitudes, ambiguity at the policy level, and variation in practice.
Residential care transformed: revisiting 'The last refuge'
- Authors:
- JOHNSON Julia, ROLPH Sheena, SMITH Randall
- Publisher:
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Publication year:
- 2010
- Pagination:
- 304p.
- Place of publication:
- Basingstoke
Drawing on data deposited at the University of Essex the authors revisit Peter Townsend's classic study of residential care in England and Wales, The Last Refuge (1962), and with input from a hundred older volunteer researchers, the authors traced what happened to the 173 homes that Townsend visited. They also revisited 20 of the surviving local authority, voluntary and private homes. The book straddles the boundary between history and sociology and reviews: the policy context and the history of research into residential care for older people over the last 50 years; provides new insights into the continuing history of residential care for older people about what kinds of homes have survived and why; makes comparisons between particular homes today and in the past demonstrating not only substantial changes but also strong continuities; reveals persisting inequalities in the standard of care home provision in the early 2000s in England and Wales and discusses the ethical and practical challenges involved in designing a revisiting study, reusing archived data and in engaging older people as 'volunteer' researchers.
Uncovering history: private sector care homes for older people in England
- Authors:
- JOHNSON Julia, ROLPH Sheena, SMITH Randall
- Journal article citation:
- Journal of Social Policy, 39(2), April 2010, pp.235-253.
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Place of publication:
- Cambridge
During research for The Last Refuge (1962), Peter Townsend visited 173 public, voluntary and private residential care homes for older people in England and Wales. This article, drawing on this old data now archived at the University of Essex, traces the subsequent history of these homes, revisiting a small sample that were still operating as care homes in 2006. The authors, focusing on the 42 private homes he previously visited, some of which remain open and were revisited by during the current research in 2005/6, note that the pre-1980 history of private sector residential care provision for older people is an elusive and poorly charted subject. Drawing on the two data sets for then and now, this article aims to contribute new insights into this area of UK policy and practice history, by drawing comparison in terms of the physical environment of the residential care home, the resident’s and staff’s opinions, and, using the Commission for Social Care Inspection reports, a measure of quality.
'The Last Refuge' revisited: a case study
- Authors:
- JOHNSON Julia, ROLPH Sheena, SMITH Randall
- Journal article citation:
- Generations Review, 18(1), January 2008, Online only
- Publisher:
- British Society of Gerontology
The authors were awarded a grant by the ESRC to revisit Peter Townsend's study of residential care for older people, published in 1962 as 'The Last Refuge'. In this article the authors look at one of the 39 voluntary homes they revisited, comparing the home then with what it is now. Whereas most of the homes revisited were still in the same building, in the mid-1980s this home was replaced by a new purpose built one.
Using photography to understand change and continuity in the history of residential care for older people
- Authors:
- ROLPH Sheena, JOHNSON Julia, SMITH Randall
- Journal article citation:
- International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 12(5), December 2009, pp.421-439.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
Between 1957 and 1961 British sociologist, Peter Townsend, visited173 local authority, voluntary and privately owned residential care homes for older people across England and Wales. As part of his research he took 100 photographs 33 of which are included in his book The Last Refuge. His original data are now deposited in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at the University of Essex. The authors have undertaken research, funded by the ESRC, revisiting Townsend’s work and some of the homes he studied in order to conduct an overtime comparison. In this paper the authors contextualise and analyse Townsend’s use of photographs, and explore the impact of his approach on their research, and the issues it raised for their photography. They argue that, although Townsend did not analyse his photographs, they were significant data for use in his arguments critiquing residential care. However they were a product of a different socio-historical context to that of the present study and as such posed considerable ethical and practical challenges when the authors attempted to use this aspect of his methodology for an overtime comparison. For example the authors’ freedom to photograph at will was heavily curtailed by issues of permission and consent. The authors argue that, despite the constraints, photography was an important part of their methodology, enabling comparisons and illuminating historical patterns in residential care for older people.