The proportion of elderly population is growing with each year, and so are the interests and offers for various care programmes of this specific population. In the theoretical part, I start by presenting the elderly, more specifically the age as a developmental period, its characteristics and also development tasks and needs of the elderly. From here on, I focus primarily on one of the higher needs, the need for personal human relations, which the targeted population mainly satisfy within their social network. The latter is defined and illustrated with the help of numerous authors. I also explain the effects of the social network on the life of an individual. I continue by explaining why we must explore, think and learn more about this specific age group with the help of demographic changes or aging of this particular population. I focus on the Slovene network of care of the elderly. I present the institutional form of care in detail, even though only about 5 % of all elderly are a part of it. The quality of life of the people in this kind of care is mainly affected by the institution's orientation. Here I explicitly define the dimensions and present two extreme orientations: medical and social. With the emergence of the fourth generation homes for the elderly, we have already been getting very close to social orientation, which has not reached an important bloom in Slovenia yet. Family homes are also classified under the fourth generation of homes. They have been persistently expanding in Croatia for the past few years. I introduce them through legislation and other rare sources. In Slovenia there is not much known about family homes and the legislation does not provide information about the life itself in these homes. Therefore, in the empirical part, I present the latter from the point of view of five interviewees who are currently living in three different family homes in Croatia. I gathered a sample of five Slovene elderly people living in Croatian family homes. Two representatives were male and three female. All of them have also lived in classical homes. By conducting interviews, I wanted to learn about the quality of life and living in family homes, how the needs of the elderly are being met, what is the atmosphere like and the nature of relations among different agents.
I have learnt that despite the fact that family homes are getting positively close to the fourth generation principles, mainly due to their location, smallness and permanence of the staff, some still do not include the essential characteristics of this generation's homes. In reference to the name – family homes, they ought to look up to the life in a family significantly more, which in the homes included in this research, is not present. The elderly should not feel separation and distance from other members, in this case, the personnel. They should also include them in activities, such as household assistance much more. Medical personnel is still in the majority, which is understandable, given the fact that the people living in these homes have various medical conditions. Nevertheless, this should not be the reason for routine treatment. One of three homes is advanced in this particular aspect and is considered as a good example of approaching social orientation, but this still too much depends on the personality of the personnel.
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