The Golden Rainbow framework: distributed service capacity for ageing-in-place in supported community housing

Adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are living longer and ageing in supported community-based housing. Later-life transitions, including frailty, chronic illness, dementia-related changes, hospital discharge, and end-of-life needs, challenge the promise of deinstitutionalisation. Service systems respond either by relocating people to more specialised settings or by bringing surveillance, staff-led routines, and restrictions into the home. Both responses may reduce autonomy, belonging, and home-likeness. This article introduces the Golden Rainbow framework, a practice-developed service architecture designed to support ageing-in-place while preventing safety concerns from colonising the home. The article is organised around two analytical concepts: nested belonging and institutional leakage. It is argued that ageing-in-place cannot be understood simply as remaining at the same address. A distributed architecture of support across the home, cluster, neighbourhood, and city/ecosystem levels is required, so that health, support, and governance functions are organised around the home rather than inside it. The article describes the Israeli supported-housing context from which the framework emerged and analyses three mechanisms: cluster-level surge-and-taper support, Home Protection Review, and community/family liaison. A vignette illustrates how the model responds to hospital discharge after a fall without allowing temporary risk governance to become a permanent feature of life in the home. The evaluation agenda proposes fidelity and outcome indicators, including the number of days of institutional leakage and the taper obligation, to assess whether ageing-in-place preserves home-likeness rather than preventing relocation. Golden Rainbow is presented as a testable, rights-based service design for disability providers and policymakers seeking to balance safety and autonomy.