With particular attention to lessons learned in Canada, Sweden, and Norway, the contributing authors argue that publicly-funded care homes remain critical to care arrangements but require policy and practice transformations to produce equitable and supportive conditions. Attentive to the specific contexts and tensions that shape care, chapters address key questions about care home quality and labour in relation to gender, race, ethnicity, religion and class. The book analyses the physical and social boundaries that set the conditions for quality of life and care, moving beyond the minimum to explain how nursing homes can provide joy.

Offering alternative approaches to the complex challenges facing this vital public service, this book will be a key reference for students and scholars of health policy, comparative social policy and social work. Its integration of statistical, policy and practice analysis with ethnographic research will prove invaluable to those concerned with long-term care policy and practice.