This is a PhD thesis exploring the policy of community care for older people from 1834 to 1988. It also includes three case studies looking at different attempts to deliver community care to older people, focusing on the extent to which the professionals who were delivering community care agreed on who should be supported in the "community", and, on what basis, and, by whom. The thesis also undertakes a comprehensive literature review of:

a) professional responses to key government White Papers on community care policy for older people;
b) key medical, nursing, social work and housing journals/articles on community care policy and practice over three different time periods chosen because of their distinct economic and political contexts.

The thesis finds that many contemporary "community care" policy themes were repeated throughout the time period analysed; that "community care" was a term first used in government policy in the late 1920s, not the late 1950s as was commonly thought to be the case; and that inter-professional consensus about "community care" policy and practice only existed at a very high level of generality.