ABSTRACT
Like the prevalence of the disease itself, interest in residential care of people with senile dementia is bound to grow. While the option of domiciliary care may be achievable for increasingly high levels of disability, for other groups of elderly and disabled people there is a limit to the endurance of relatives and friends of people with dementia. Their demands are such that support provided by community-based social services is necessarily limited, and institutional care of some form frequently becomes the only viable option. It is important, both for those in receipt of care and for those who can no longer cope with the burden of care, that these institutions should provide the most beneficial environment possible.
