I'm not sure 'preventative' services exist in and of themselves, but there are a couple of research strands that you might be able to draw on: a) the idea of care planning (or proactive care) for people with long term conditions (many of whom are elderly)- the process fits more in the clinic than in the community, but is nevertheless useful in understanding how further deterioration might be best managed, as much as possible in the community; and b) the idea of social network/ support theory and how that impacts on people's health seeking behaviours. This includes research on carer needs and carer support, which is absolutely key in supporting people in the community, keeping them there and preventing accidents as well as forecasting needs and foreplanning care.

The Public Health Agency of Barcelona is actually developing a study on caregiving. The austerity measures had also affected the research fundings and these kind of studies does not have an immediate effect in economies. That's why research groups have troubles to fund these kind of projects, consequently papers are not being published.

Yes I think partly what is happening is that although local authorities have an obligation to provide preventive services, a lack of funding has meant that these are not necessarily as extensive and apparent as previously. Also as responsibilities for commissioning have become more localised there is less uniformity in provision. i.e. there aren't the big national programmes like POPP, which had funded evaluations and generated research. So perhaps that may explain in part a lack of literature focussed on prevention in the last few years. But I think there are some search terms, like 'proactive care' which may help to identify more work in this field - so thanks for that.