ABSTRACT
While the current policy emphasis is on caring for people with all types of disability in the community, people with senile dementia present a number of difficulties to service providers. Their need for monitoring and the stress that they place on the people who care for them is such that residential care will often be the most appropriate type of care. Indeed, for people currently in long-term hospital wards, residential care represents a step towards ‘care in the community’. Moreover, the policy impetus towards increasing choice and changing patterns of financial incentives, due to be introduced as a result of the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, mean that there will be added incentives to vary the ways in which ‘shelter with care’ (including all types of accommodation, from sheltered housing to nursing homes) is provided.
