[Out-of-hospital geriatric facilities]

In France there are many and varied housing structures for the elderly. They were created after the war in response to the progressive ageing of the population, bringing in its wake an ever increasing dependence. These structures consist of accommodation equipped for almost complete nursing care. There is a large number of such establishments situated between individual homes and long-term hospital care: homes in the form of small family type reception units (such as sheltered housing), living with a family, rest-homes and sun-homes for the least disabled. Service-flats provide a further large group of private establishments at all prices with various levels of medical care. Retirement homes with medical cures, the MAPAD, can look after the dependent chronically ill. The biggest problem concerns provision for intellectually dependent patients who are cared for in psychogeriatric units of the MAPAD or their equivalent and in structures based on very different concepts: "the cantous" or the "Jardins d'Eleusis".