Our Homes, Our Lives

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.