ABSTRACT
This book will appear in the UK during one of the greatest periods of change in health and social-care services. After many years of argument and debate about the relative merits of a generic approach to social care, and the relative merits of integrating mental health services into mainstream health services, a double integration is taking place. Mental health services are being provided by new, specialist, larger provider organisations (mental health trusts), and their services increasingly are being commissioned by primary care. At the same time permissive mechanisms have been put into place to enable the integration of social care into these specialist mental health organisations. New partnership arrangements under Section 31 of the Health Act 1999 will enable local authorities and NHS bodies to improve services to mental health service users through the transferring of functions and the pooling of resources. The partnership arrangements are designed to eliminate the rigid division of health from social care which is very familiar in some parts of the world, for example in Russia where there are entirely separate ministries (of health and of social protection). In other places, notably some public mental health services in the US, the idea of mental health care that does not incorporate social care is unheard of.
