– Re-abling care of frail older people is highly on the agenda in several countries. The purpose of this paper is to have a closer look at the argumentation used for its establishment by local policy actors in the field and the kind of expectations towards the behaviour of frail older people it entails.
– The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with 17 local policy actors in two Danish municipalities. The interviews have been analysed with the help of argumentative discourse analysis.
– The most important argument for re-abling care appears to be grounded in economic reasons. However, a second, moral argument was found revolving around the older peoples’ activity, which contributes to the establishment of moral expectations towards frail older people to be active.
– As the goal of the study was to analyse understandings and values of key local actors, the implementation of re-ablement programmes and the users’ perspective were not studied.
– The paper contributes to the investigation of the shift from universal entitlement as a right to towards market rationalities in Danish elder care.
