Introduction

The focus of this chapter is on the changing nature of local authority residential care from 1971 to 1993 in terms of such issues as capital investment, the level of dependency of residents, the impact of market competition and the growing emphasis on consumer rights.

Our previous research explored the role of such care in the earlier period from the outbreak of the Second World War through to the creation of social services departments in April 1971 (Means and Smith, 1998a). The study focused on how the 1948 National Assistance Act attempted to replace the old public assistance institution with a new form of nonstigmatising residential home to be run by local authorities:

Yet the expected new homes were not built in the 1950s because of general restrictions on capital investment programmes during the post-war period of austerity and because older people were seen as a low priority for whatever capital was available.

Local authorities coped with this situation in two main ways. First, they continued to make extensive use of former public assistance institutions. A Ministry of Health (1959) report suggested many of these buildings had been updated (large dormitories partitioned, ceilings lowered, new heating systems installed, floors carpeted, and so on) but that “nevertheless there are still former institutions which have shown little change since 1948” (p 239). Second, large existing homes were bought, often “in splendid grounds, offloaded onto the market by the erstwhile wealthy, left servantless and impoverished by the war” (Kemp, 1973, p 496). Such homes were often in luxurious surroundings, but tended to be in very isolated positions and with very limited access for disabled people.