Criteria for assessing a client's fitness for admission to a welfare home: a practical proposition.

A study of the residents admitted to five Oxfordshire old people's welfare homes was undertaken to discover whether it was possible to define criteria that could be used by workers in different professional fields when assessing the suitability of an elderly person for welfare home accommodation. It is possible to produce useful and practical guidelines using the physical disability subsection of the Stockton Geriatric Rating Scale, as well as the overall score, but it is probably necessary for each area to assess its own cut-off points. The use of cut-off points was, from a practical point of view, as effective as and easier than using individual items on the rating scale as a means of discriminating between those suitable for welfare home accommodation and other clients who are unsuitable.