<i>Care Homes in a Turbulent Era: Do They Have a Future?</i> Pat Armstrong and Susan Braedley (eds), Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023, 184 pp., hbk £76.50, ISBN: 978 180392 581 3

Care Homes in a Turbulent Era: Do They Have a Future? is part of the In a Turbulent Era series investigating best practices, research and new ways of operating in the postpandemic era.Edited by Canadian professors Pat Armstrong and Susan Braedley, the book analyses the multifaceted care home challenges and offers alternative approaches focussing on four main themes: approaches to care, financing and ownership, work organisation, and accountability structures.Drawing on more than 15 years of traditional and site-switching ethnographic research in Canada, Germany, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, each chapter concludes with concrete insights or recommendations to improve care home operations and confront the underlying structural challenges in a post-pandemic world.'The research indicates that we need nursing homes now and in the future and that there is no single best way to construct and organize care homes' (p.14).The opening chapter, 'Care homes in crisis: Promising ways forward' , sets forth general assumptions by recognising: (1) the complexity of care home communities, which involves all who live and work in, visit and manage care homes; (2) the care relationship, which may involve inequalities of power, gender and race; and (3) the challenges of for-profit models, as a solution to which it advocates for public ownership and transparency, supported by a feminist political economy framework.Armstrong and Braedley address the immediate challenges faced by care homes during Covid-19, calling for a fundamental shift in how care homes are structured and managed.The editors illustrate eight lessons learnt, including government leadership, (non-)profit care, working conditions, community building in and outside the nursing home, physical environments and diversity, among others.In Chapter 2, 'Piercing the corporate veil: Nursing home ownership in turbulent times' , Hugh Armstrong acknowledges the growing number of for-profit nursing homes and highlights the ethical and practical issues of profit-driven care, advocating for public or municipal ownership to ensure transparency and accountability.