This article concerns the experiences gained from the action research project, Quality in Elder Care, involving social dimensions of quality in public elder care. The aim of the project was to improve the professional skills and engagement of the care workers and to improve the life quality and participation of the residents. Furthermore, the idea was that the project could strengthen a public and professional discourse about more democratic and inclusive alternatives (for staff as well as residents) to the currently growing bureaucracy and expansion of top-down control systems in elder care. The project was inspired by critical utopian action research with future workshops as an important methodological tool. The project followed the core characteristics of action research to be ''a shared commitment to democratic social change''. The article discusses how the project contributed to changes in care quality in a joint effort between care workers, residents at the nursing home, and researchers. It concludes that the project led to empowerment of the residents and staff and played an important role in the development of democratic knowledge building about better quality and ethics in elder care.

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Living in a long-term care (LTC) institution provides older people experiencing health and social problems with a comprehensive range of support services that address their quality of life. Despite access to such services, challenges arise in relation to their participation in key activities both within and outside the institution. This chapter examines such challenges, reviewing and describing ways to prevent exclusion along various domains, specifically social relationships, civic participation and socio-cultural life. Firstly, we discuss ways in which bio-medical models of care and the quality control systems, which are dominant in LTC services, standardise care, tending to put decisions exclusively in hands of staff, taking away residents’ autonomy, and ultimately curtailing rights and citizenship status. Secondly, we examine how LTC services might prevent such exclusion and promote older people’s participation in at least four respects: (1) prompting and supporting residents’ ability to take decisions on their own care, (2) favouring the maintenance and creation of social relationships, (3) enabling residents’ participation in the activities and management of the institution, and (4) guaranteeing residents’ rights and full access to citizenship. We discuss the impact and limitations of recent initiatives put into practice in these areas of practice.

The article will present how action research may contribute to social innovation and empowerment in public welfare and cultural institutions (nursing homes and libraries) in a manner that supports the interests of marginalised citizens and local communities, and creates opportunities for positive change. First, we introduce the concepts of empowerment, action research and social innovation along with the roots of these concepts in critical social theory. Secondly, two case studies are presented to analyse two different methodological variants of action research in two different contexts. The first case is about action research in nursing homes, where the objective was to improve elder care through more autonomy and better quality of life for residents and employees. In this project (inspired by critical utopian action research), so called 'future workshops' were applied to create "free space" for reflection and creation of concrete suggestions of social innovation in elder care. The second case is about the transformation of a public library into a community centre. In this case, the aim was to break down barriers between citizens and public institutions in a deprived, multicultural urban area and thereby promote local community empowerment. In this project, 'empowerment evaluation' was used as an action research method. In the final part we compare the two approaches (utopian action research and empowerment facilitation), and discuss the danger of falling into the trap of localism, where successful social innovations: instead of being up-scaled and widely distributed, end up as oneoffs or simply die out at the very local level