Well-Being and Older People: The Place of Day Clubs in Reconceptualising Participation and Challenging Deficit.

This article draws from research carried out in Australia, but makes connections with policy and practice in the four countries that comprise the UK into the relationship between the use of day clubs, sometimes referred to as day centres, and enhanced social connectedness, resilience, and mental and physical health. As part of this process, interpretations of commonly used terminology such as ‘care’, ‘protection’ and ‘vulnerability’ are subject to critical review. In addition, the tensions that exist between self-defined forms of well-being and support service assessment criteria, which prioritise ‘risk’ and particular aspects of physical safety, are subject to interrogation. The purpose of this article is to explore how a form of service often associated with maintenance can be reconfigured to promote shared ownership and counter social isolation and limitation and research carried out by Fawcett (2011) is used as a case study to illustrate the currency of well-being in policy and practice. The article can also be seen to have a wider brief which is to examine the policy to practice interface and the ways in which the delivery of care services can so easily disable rather than enable and lead to the erosion of autonomy and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]