Residential Care Transformed: an accolade

The recent book by Julia Johnson, Sheena Rolph and Randal Smith has been awarded the newly established British Academy Peter Townsend Policy Press Prize. The prize will be awarded biennially to the author of what the Academy judges to be a piece of outstanding work with policy relevance and academic merit, on a topic falling within one or more of the fields to which Townsend made a major contribution - poverty and inequality, ageing and the lives of older people, disability, or inequalities in health.

In this book Julia, Sheena and Randal revisit Peter Townsend's classic study of residential care in England and Wales, The Last Refuge, published in 1962. With the help of a hundred older volunteer researchers, they traced what happened to the 173 homes that Townsend visited. They also revisited 20 of the surviving local authority, voluntary and private homes so as to compare them then and now. The book includes some previously unpublished photographs from the Peter Townsend Collection which when set beside those taken in the early 21st century illustrate not only continuity and change in residential care but also in visual representations of older people.

Julia was a founder member of CABS and both she and Sheena are Visiting Senior Research Fellows at The Open University: Randal is Honorary Professorial Research Fellow at Bristol University. CABS congratulates them on an a superb book and a great achievement.

And the Peter Townsend inaugural award goes to....Johnson, Rolph and Smith

 

New Book

We are delighted to announce the publication of a new book by Bill Bytheway, CABS member and Visiting Research Fellow at the Open University.

What is age?   A simple question...but not that easy to answer. 

'Unmasking Age' addresses it using data from a series of research projects, supplemented by material from a range of other sources including diaries and fiction. Drawing on a long career in social research, Bill critically examines various methods and discusses ways of uncovering the realities of age.

"Fine reading, indeed!" Jay Gubrium, University of Missouri, USA

'Unmasking Age' is published by Policy Press [ISBN 9781847426178].

Working with older people’s organisations

On the 12th of May CABS and the Centre for Policy on Ageing ran a study day that explored methodological and practical issues when user involvement had been achieved through links with existing older people’s organisations and groups.

The day was constructed to critically explore a range of ways in which older people had engaged with research. Julia Johnson started the day by reflecting on her experiences of working with volunteer researchers as part of her work with Sheena Rolph and Randall Smith in which they revisited Peter Townsend's study of residential care for older people. http://www.open.ac.uk/hsc/research/research-projects/the-last-refuge-revisited/the-last-refuge-revisited.php

Bill Bytheway then drew on his experiences of working with older people's groups as part of the RoAD project which investigated how age discrimination is experienced by older people. http://www.open.ac.uk/hsc/research/research-projects/road/home.php

In the afternoon I (Josie Tetley) gave a presentation along Stephanie Warren and Joan Walker from from Age UK Milton Keynes. In our presentation we described how members of Age UK had participated in a European technology project OPT-in. Our presentation can be accessed via the OPT-in project wiki website http://mcl.open.ac.uk/OptIn

The day concluded with a presentation from Jackie and Tony Watts who described the work of Enfield Borough Older People's forum and their European Over 50s project that is campaigning for a higher level of service for older people across Europe. http://www.enfieldover50sforum.org.uk/
http://www.eur50plus.org/

Throughout the day there was lively questioning and discussion amongst participants. It was our first event at The Open University Camden office and whilst there were a few technical issues, the central London location was seen as a positive location for future seminars.