"Your family will be your circle of friends". Care in senior co-housing.

Based on an ethnographic study conducted in Spain, we analyse the possibilities of co-housing as an alternative that may help to change the current social organisation of care in old age, which is based on family care and the institutionalization of the elderly in nursing homes. While in other European countries, care in co-housing is financed by public funds and does not represent an exclusionary alternative to assisted living facilities, in Spain, this alternative represents a shift towards de-familisation and deinstitutionalisation of end-of-life care. However, care management in situations of severe dependency is only just beginning to be explored. The transformative potential of these initiatives is limited because: 1) they build community, but with members who are very homogeneous in terms of their economic, social and cultural capital; 2) this makes it difficult to be recognised as institutions that provide public resources; 3) care ends up being dealt with privately (albeit collectively), which means that 4) the current social organisation of care does not change at its core, nor does it lead to a comprehensive transformation of the care model. We believe public administrations should endeavour to make progress in defining more socially just alternatives and recognising the potential of these community care initiatives.

Keywords:
de-familisation; deinstitutionalisation; self-managed communities; dependency; ageing; community care