AbstractThe purpose of any 'care home' is to provide care in a homely environment. These are simple words for an immensely complex task. In the author's previous paper for this journal (Vol. 1, No. 3), he identified and analysed the shortcomings of care homes (that many of them are neither caring nor homely), and set out an initial framework and a systems diagram by which the organisation of a care home could be understood in order to build the foundations for change. The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate how, with the use of simple psychoanalytic and systems theory, and a single-minded focus on the primary task, homes (and the organisations that run them) can be designed, reformed, maintained and repaired so that they can be truly caring and homely. (As before, the author recognises that some care homes do succeed in being truly caring and homely — genuinely therapeutic — places. While this paper will be helpful to those good homes, the fundamental criticisms and proposals for change are not...