Older adults who have reduced decision-making capacity and no family or friends to compensate for these deficiencies are known as unbefriended and require a public guardian. The purpose of this study was to review the peer-reviewed and grey literature to determine the scope of available research on unbefriended older adults in Canada and the United States. We found limited research examining unbefriended older adults. No Canadian studies or reports were located. Unbefriended older adults were childless or had fewer children, were more cognitively impaired, and were older than older adults who were not unbefriended. These findings demonstrate a stark scarcity of studies on unbefriended older adults. Research is urgently needed using standardized data collection of guardianship status in order to enable studies of the prevalence of public guardianship in Canada.

Residents in long-term care (LTC) often require physical rehabilitation (PR) to maintain/improve physical function. This scoping review described the breadth of literature regarding PR in LTC to date, synthesizing PR interventions that have been evaluated, outcomes used, and tools for determining service eligibility. A structured search, conducted in six licensed databases and grey literature, identified 381 articles for inclusion. Most interventions were delivered and evaluated at the resident level and typically were multicomponent exercise programs. Performance-based measures, activities of daily living, and mood were the most frequently reported outcomes. A key knowledge gap was PR in relation to goals, such as quality of life. Future studies should reflect medically complex residents who live in LTC, and length of residents’ stay should be differentiated. Intervention studies should also explore realistic delivery methods; moreover, tool development for determining service eligibility is necessary to ensure equality in rehabilitative care across the LTC sector.