There are as yet no commonly agreed definitions of Extra Care Housing. This may encourage innovations, but it is bound to be confusing.

 At EAC we consider Extra Care Housing as one specific type amongst a large array of types of housing schemes and developments for older people, which offer a wider range of services than are available in standard sheltered or retirement housing schemes. We call this large array Housing-with-Care.  Within Housing-with-Care, we are trying to limit the use of the term 'Extra Care Housing' to schemes and developments in which personal care services are available to the residents, on site, 24/7, as one would expect in a residential care home. That definition corresponds to the model encouraged and funded by the Department of Health www.networks.csip.org.uk/housing and the Housing Corporation. 

Various attempts have been made to devise a typology of housing for older people. See for instance p33 of http://www.housingcare.org/downloads/kbase/3004.pdf . We welcome this while realising that in a market flooded with terms such as ‘very sheltered’, ‘assisted living’, ‘independent living’, ‘retirement village’, what matters more than a name is the clarity of the information detailing each scheme or development. This is why we have been urging housing providers for over 15 years to supply our National Database of Housing for Older People with more and more details. To tease them further into helping us, we have recently introduced the EAC Quality of Information Mark which is discussed elsewhere on this website.