ABSTRACT
It is now 25 years since Townsend’s harrowing account of institutional life for elderly people (Townsend 1962). The radical change in policy towards residential provision for elderly people heralded by the 1948 National Assistance Act, moving towards smaller, more homely units of local authority residential care, was implemented only slowly. Townsend had found in 1960 that ‘the mainstay of local authority residential services for the handicapped and aged’ (1962:29) was still the old workhouse building. Of the local authority homes visited, one third offered very bad facilities, and another third not much better. His account of the quality of the residents’ lives makes sad reading.
