In the 1970s residential care was usually seen by social workers as a regrettable necessity, to be used only as a last resort. So the important contribution it made to social wellbeing was not explored, and it remained the Cinderella of social work for resources, status and training. Originally published in 1979, Howard Jones counters this negative attitude by asking what role residential care in its various forms should play. He sees the regime as the key to the understanding of that role, and group work as the social work method on which it should be based.

Among the topics dealt with in The Residential Community are regime-planning, staffing, selection for residential care, the dynamics of interpersonal relationships in the institution, relationships with neighbours and the relatives of inmates, and the rational planning of daily programmes so that they become not merely pastimes, but an active contribution towards the realisation of institutional aims. Some current controversies in social work are taken up, in so far as they are relevant to residential care, in particular the nature of the implicit contract between residents and staff, and the related question of whether residential social workers should attempt to 'change' their clients.