There were six main aims of the study:
to analyse and comment on changes in residential care provision at the national level in England and Wales between 1959 and 2005
to document and explain changes in the use of properties that, in 1959, housed the residential care homes studied by Peter Townsend (the tracing study)
to document and explain changes in daily life for staff and residents in residential care homes over the same period (the follow-up study)
to contribute to the development of methodologies for revisiting studies and the reuse of archives. See ESDS Re-using qualitative data
to fill a gap in the social history of residential care for older people and stimulate the collection of oral histories