An interview survey was conducted with ninety-four elderly persons, sixty-two in community senior service centers and thirty-two in a nursing home, to find out whether aged persons do identify certain possessions as cherished above all others and to see what meaning these possessions had for their later years. It was found that 81 per cent of the sample could quite readily identify a most cherished object. Different kinds of possessions tended to have different meanings and referents in the lives of the subjects. The lack of a cherished possession was associated with lower life satisfaction scores, which suggests that such a lack might be an indicator of poor adjustment to old age.

Foster family care is one of a number of residential programs that has as an important goal the integration of residents into the life of the community. One hundred one family care homes for the mentally ill in two regions of New York State were examined. The extent of resident participation in community life is described. Participation was found to be related to three facets of the family care environment: extent of community participation of the care provider, extent of integration of the resident into the foster family, and extent of community acceptance of the resident. Furthermore, differences in resident participation with and without the care provider are noted. Integration of the resident into the family is suggested as a possibility for vicarious involvement in the community at large.

The rationale behind adult foster care (AFC) has been that "participation in the life of the family" is superior to institutionalization. The extent to which AFC is familial has been widely debated, ranging from claims that this environment provides a surrogate family, to claims that it is no more than a mini-institution. This paper discusses the extent to which elderly clients are integrated into the family and the method by which such integration was measured in a sample of one hundred adult foster homes in New York State. The four dimensions used to measure familism were Affection, Social Interaction, the performance of Ritual, and the minimization of Social Distance.

Practice placements are key to the training of an allied health professional, supporting the integration of theoretical and practical knowledge, allowing the development of key skills and enculturation to a professional role. Practice placements in dietetic pre-registration training have largely focussed on clinical/health care settings, with the students based in dietetic departments. Current developments in integrated health and social care provision in the United Kingdom mean there is a compelling need to develop a workforce equipped to work across sectors to effectively support people's nutritional needs. Against this background, a partnership group of healthcare and managerial professionals, representing NHS Education for Scotland (NES), NHS Highland (NHSH), a private care home group based in the North of Scotland and Robert Gordon University worked together to pilot and develop a model for the placement of student dietitians within social care settings (initially care homes). This novel approach embeds students in a social care setting for part of their placement rather than having them based within a dietetic department. The placements were positively evaluated and widely shared via Allied Health Profession (AHP) blogposts and in publications such as the Care Inspectorate newsletter, and other Scottish Health Boards are now developing local models of dietetic social care placements. There is a recognition that practice placement models should prepare the dietitians of the future for working beyond NHS environments, and that alternative models of placement should be explored from the perspective of raising the profile of the profession and ensuring sustainability of placement provision. Keywords

Community acceptance has been described as essential to the successful placement of the mentally ill in the community. The study reported here examined acceptance of mental patients living in family care homes and found that residents were well accepted by neighbors and by others in the community, albeit on a superficial level, and that acceptance could be predicted by variables relating to the residents' social network.