The Social Care Overview and Scrutiny Panel completed a first phase review of the future development of residential care services for older people in Plymouth. The Panel undertook an initial piece of work to assess the current use of Plymouth Social Services residential units for older people, with the view to expanding the scope of service provision to provide a greater focus on enabling services. The work linked into the Social Services Department’s focus on increasing the number of people supported in the community (as opposed to entering long term care), and in particular to the number of residents accessing intensive and/or specialist domiciliary care.