Adult Day Services (ADS) have emerged as a significant alternative to institutional care for older adults. Nationally there are close to 6,000 ADS centers serving approximately 300,000 clients with a projected unmet need for 9,000 centers in the next two decades. With increasing emphasis on home and community-based care, ADS programs are an effective transitional setting between home and an institution. For regular attendees, ADS often helps defer institutionalization and reduces

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... . ADS programs offer clients socialization with age cohorts in a medicallymonitored, secure environment and fill an important role in providing assistance to older adults who are experiencing physical and cognitive decline. In this symposium, we examine the importance of programming in the daily experience of individuals who attend ADS from the perspectives of clients, staff, and family caregivers. We explore (a) the impact of the physical setting on social interactions in two diverse ADS centers, (b) client engagement through music and dance, and (c) personcentered approaches to activities for clients with dementias. Further, we consider (d) how staff surveillance intersects with client autonomy in the culture of ADS and (e) how the clients in ADS define successful aging and construct both an identity and a sense of community. Data for this symposium are drawn from participant observation and ethnographic interviews conducted in the first two field sites of an ongoing 4-year NIA-funded qualitative study, "Adult Day Services: Cultural Contexts and Programming Effects."