Moving on from Community Care

By Lorna Easterbrook.
Age Concern Books
ISBN 0862 423 481
£14.99

If you regard older people as just patients or clients, then
this book does indeed provide a wealth of accessible information.
Lorna Easterbrook is no stranger to the world of treatment, care
and support of older people. Readers will benefit and value the
structure of the book and the topics covering key legislation, case
law, systems of paying for care, communicating with users and
carers, and regulating services and protecting users.

But if you view older people as primarily citizens, regardless of
their interdependency, this book will reinforce the typical third-
and fourth-age paradigm. By framing community care only as matters
of health and social care – that is, treatment, care and support –
it leaves out all that falls outside of those confines. It fails to
reflect on, and confront care professionals with, the need to
incorporate into their thinking, and thus practice, considerations
about leisure, lifelong learning, regeneration, crime and disorder,
neighbourhood renewal, voluntary engagement as citizens and social
inclusion.

Moving on from community care is to move beyond the notion of
“recipients of health and social care” into the realm of all older
people as contributors, shapers and influences that reflect all
aspects of citizenship.

Mervyn Eastman is director of Better Government for Older
People.