Domestic or institutional care homes - pokey vs non-human?

One of my occasional pictures of facilities for older people. This is one of our local residential care homes. Note the emphasis on family management - a claim for more personal care than a big chain. That is supported by using an extended detached family home. But very often the conversion and extensions required lead to a maze of fire precautions and corridors, whereas bigger buildings are less atmospheric. made more so because there is likely not to be family management. Does this provide choice in the market?

The domestic (and pokey) or the institutional (and nonhuman) - which should we prefer, for what purposes? And can the domestic be non-pokey and the institutional human?

Prevention: free older people's opportunities

You might be interested to see a 'less than 10 minutes' SCIE 'Social Care TV' film about various projects for promoting well-being for older people. There is also some talking-head stuff from Julien Forder at the Personal Social Services Research Unit about what constitutes prevention.

My comment is: we need to think carefully about prevention, because government tends to think of it as being about preventing them coming in for extra expenditure. But what it should be about is helping people attain the right lifestyle according to their own wishes. Is having lots of older people's clubs the right approach? It all looks a bit institutional here. It might be all right for some, but not for all. For some people, promoting involvement in the local pub may be more right. We're still thinking about organising things for people, rather than making it possible to free older people's opportunities.

Link to SCIE 'Social Care TV page on promoting well-being for older people