Episode description

Residential care revisited - Laurie Taylor considers Peter Townsend's landmark research, 'The Last Refuge', fifty years after its publication. Retracing Townsend's footsteps, a hundred, older volunteer researchers sought to find out what had happened to the 173 care homes in his classic study. Julia Johnson, one of the authors of the new study, charts the changes and continuities in care for older people in England and Wales. She's joined by Robin Darton, an expert in social care, Also, the archaeologist Rachael Kiddey, examines artefacts from two homelessness sites in Bristol and York. What can these items, as well as oral histories collected from the homeless, tell us about what it means to have no shelter in the 21st century?

Producer: Jayne Egerton.