News

Edited by Keith Sumner.
Centre for Policy on Ageing
£15
ISBN 1901097854

This easy read with an interesting structure reflects the outcome of the Centre for Policy on Ageing's series of seminars in 2001 called Choice in Late Life Living Arrangements.

The idea of commentaries following each main chapter is innovative and assists the reader in intellectually engaging in a debate about how "housing and housing issues have been detached at policy and at resource levels from health and social care issues".

Keith Sumner provides strong topping and tailing of the contributors' analysis from Gillian Dalley's "Independence and Autonomy" to a misplaced demographic chapter teasing out residential proximity and housing preferences among older people in Britain and Italy.

The book's intention is to reinforce older people's involvement in decision making and planning their living arrangements, but their voices were only articulated through the professional contributors.


The links between health, social care and housing were well covered but living arrangements in the context of community regeneration, neighbourhood renewal, crime, transport, income, social inclusion and lifelong learning were not.

Mervyn Eastman is director of Better Government for Older People, a programme launched in 1998 to improve public services for older people.