ABSTRACT
Transition involves critical turning points or events in the lives of individuals (Meleis et al. 2000). Whilst everyone will experience some critical junctures during the lifecourse, older people will experience multiple transitions starting with the transition from work to retirement. With increasing age and frailty these transitions can also include a shift from active to passive, from good to poor health, from care-giver to cared recipient, and ultimately from life to death. Each of these transitions is bound up in a particular spatial expression of ageing and care. This chapter is concerned with transitions in care from home and community to residential care settings. Following a brief discussion of the context of residential care in the UK, it examines how these transitions are negotiated and experienced by older people requiring care and support and their informal carers. It also considers how informal carers construct new caring identities within residential care settings before addressing issues of home and Home, place and non-place and sequestration within residential care settings.
