Despite calls for better support to empower people when reassessing their housing in later life, two recent literature reviews highlight a paucity of research on the efficacy of such services. This article reports a qualitative realist evaluation on the efficacy of a UK telephone service providing information on specialist housing to older people. The findings of thirty-one realist interviews with sixteen older people are presented. Information-seekers’ existing tenure (social tenant or private owner-occupier/renter) shaped their experience and utilisation of support. Broadly, however, information was considered too ‘light touch’ to empower older people. However, the widely recognised lack of accessible housing options and reports of non-transparent and unresponsive market practices were also key factors. This study underlines the widely acknowledged need to increase the supply of specialist housing, and recommends that housing options support be reflective of market conditions and be more substantive – including discussion, deliberation, education and advocacy.

We reconcile two scaling laws that have been proposed in the literature for the slip length associated with a moving contact line in diffuse interface models, by demonstrating each to apply in a different regime of the ratio of the microscopic interfacial width $l$ and the macroscopic diffusive length $l_{D}=(M{\it\eta})^{1/2}$, where ${\it\eta}$ is the fluid viscosity and $M$ the mobility governing intermolecular diffusion. For small $l_{D}/l$ we find a diffuse interface regime in which the slip length scales as ${\it\xi}\sim (l_{D}l)^{1/2}$. For larger $l_{D}/l>1$ we find a sharp interface regime in which the slip length depends only on the diffusive length, ${\it\xi}\sim l_{D}\sim (M{\it\eta})^{1/2}$, and therefore only on the macroscopic variables ${\it\eta}$ and $M$, independent of the microscopic interfacial width $l$. We also give evidence that modifying the microscopic interfacial terms in the model’s free energy functional appears to affect the value of the slip length only in the diffuse interface regime, consistent with the slip length depending only on macroscopic variables in the sharp interface regime. Finally, we demonstrate the dependence of the dynamic contact angle on the capillary number to be in excellent agreement with the theoretical prediction of Cox (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 168, 1986, p. 169), provided we allow the slip length to be rescaled by a dimensionless prefactor. This prefactor appears to converge to unity in the sharp interface limit, but is smaller in the diffuse interface limit. The excellent agreement of results obtained using three independent numerical methods, across several decades of the relevant dimensionless variables, demonstrates our findings to be free of numerical artefacts.