Ageing in place: Rethinking the role of generalist day centres

‘Ageing in place’ (AiP) is generally understood as the preference for older people to remain in their own homes and communities as they age. While this aligns with policy narratives of independence in later life, this can also serve as a cost-cutting strategy that obscures the structural inequalities shaping later life, including unequal access to support networks and the stability of ‘place’ itself. This paper provides a critique of these limitations and argues that the undervaluing of day centres reflects the narrow ways AiP is currently understood and implemented.

Drawing on the authors’ secondary reflective analyses of research with day centres across three disciplines, this paper explores how older people navigate health and spatial inequalities in their everyday lives, and how day centres can mediate these challenges. Findings suggest that day centres play a critical role in offsetting the limitations of individualised care models by offering collective spaces of support through relational and reciprocal place-making. These spaces enable older people to engage in meaningful activities, extending the notion of ‘home’ beyond the private sphere to include community settings that sustain identity and agency. By highlighting the contribution of day centres, this paper builds on critiques of the individualised and home-centric model of AiP to call for reinvestment in (and therefore reimagining of) these infrastructures as inclusive spaces that can support layered forms of relationality.