’Home-likeness’ in English and Italian care homes’ websites: from countering stereotypes to wading through the Covid-19 pandemic

Care homes often have to face negative stereotypes depicting them as dreaded places where older and/ or disabled patients are brought to spend the last period of their life. These institutions may thus use their websites to communicate a more positive self- description; this often entails depicting the care homes as real homes for their residents. The present paper aims to understand more precisely the characteristics of this ‘home- likeness’, by carrying out a corpus- assisted discourse analysis focusing on Italian websites of care homes situated in Lombardy, compared with a corpus of English websites of care homes based in London. Moreover, it discusses the implications of this ‘home- likeness’ during the coronavirus pandemic, where the concept of sheltering at home was variably used by governments and health institutions alike (both in Italy and in the UK) to gather consensus around lockdown restrictions. It concludes that the metaphor of home used in long- term residential seniors care is diffuse, but is often culture- bound, as the comparison between Italian and English websites shows both some similarities and some differences. However, in both cases it appears sometimes paradoxical and insufficient to ensure adequate patient- centred care, especially during pandemics.