Taking my lead from Tolstoy, we all want to grow old in our own home, but our own homes are all different. We all know this opening of Anna Karenina, but in the closing paragraph, Levin speaks of his power to invest a positive meaning of goodness in every minute of his life. He could have been speaking of the feelings we attach to home as we grow older: most but not all are happy. It is these differences that I want to explore in this lecture.

About the speaker: Anna Howe has over 40 years of experience in aged and community care research and policy development. Since completing her PhD at Monash University in Melbourne in 1982, she has held academic positions in gerontology at the National Ageing Research Institute, affiliated with Melbourne University, and at La Trobe University. Her policy work for the Australian Government includes advisor roles to Senate and House of Representatives inquiries, and she has carried out projects for State and Local Government and major aged care providers. Internationally, she has consulted with the OECD, the WHO, the UN, the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP), for AusAid in China, and for the World Bank in Slovakia and Estonia. Her research and policy work has spanned many aspects of long term care systems, including assessment, planning of residential and community care, interaction between acute and aged care, financing and housing.

Now retired, she has continued to make influential submissions to major inquiries such as the 2011 Productivity Commission Inquiry into Caring for Older Australians and most recently, the 2019-20 Royal Commission on quality and safety in aged care. She continues to publish, adding to over 120 papers and reports, in Australian and international refereed journals, chapters in books and major reports for government. She is an Honorary Professor in the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University.

The ANNUAL LECTURE was presented via Zoom on 23 September 2021, 5-6 pm. The video of the Annual Lecture has been uploaded here.