Ageing in place: a French-British comparison of adaptations to home and housing environments

Background Increasing life expectancy, coupled with the impact that the retirement of the baby boom cohorts will have on society, means that policies to reduce the risk of dependency in later life have become a priority in France and Britain, as elsewhere in Europe. As a consequence, the organisation, funding and delivery of personal and social care provisions are now key issues. However, existing services are very often person, rather than environmentfocused and targeted towards individuals who have already experienced some loss of autonomy, and this makes it difficult to initiate preventive measures. One such measure is ensuring that older people can live in good quality, accessible and secure housing because their ability to remain at home to ‘age in place’ will largely depend upon how well suited their living environment is to meeting their needs in later life.