experience challenges to their feelings about their homes, their bodies, their relationships with family and friends, and their relationships with formal providers of health and care. To examine the changes which, to repeat, 'challenge' older people and their families, we use a secularised version of the classical rites of passage model. Ours is the first book to apply this concept fully, despite its being considered of use by many social gerontologists. The concept's value lies, in the first place, in its holistic focus on transition and its grouping of spatial, temporal and relational changes which accompany the passage from independence to increasing dependence. Subsequently, the value lies in emphasizing a third stage, of 'reconnection', leading us to consider the situation of frail older people in terms of the wider society.This concept of rites of passage has a further value in that it helps us identify a specific population who share a culture of ageing with disabilities at home and with care. We suggest these experiences lead to a distinct late-life stage, different from independence and from greater dependence. We describe this stage as one of 'supported independence' where remaining at home is intended to provide continuity and stability, but where living and coping with disabilities and receiving care presents a major disruption of this apparent stability.Our conclusions recognise the critical necessity for considering how best to support, enable, or empower older people to maintain agency and autonomy. This, then, is the third stage suggested by the rites of passage model, of reconnection to the wider society, or perhaps, in our terms, maintaining interests and valued roles, and assuming a status of a valued identity in our society. We emphasise the role of inhome care work here, and offer other ideas to assist in fulfilling the wish of New Zealand and other governments to age-in-place successfully.This perspective has emerged through the work and research of the authors in the field of ageing and health, and care at home. Beatrice Hale worked in the field of community development, with older people as a social worker, and as a volunteer coordinator, before completing her doctorate on ageing and home care. Patrick Barrett writes in his capacity as lecturer and researcher in health and policy issues, and has recently spent time at