ABSTRACT
This book comprises a second edition of Services for the Mentally Handicapped (Malin et al., 1980). It includes extra chapters relating to the implications of the National Health Service and Community Care Act (1990) and chapters on advocacy and empowerment, and recreation and leisure services. Otherwise the format is the same as the original: an exploration of main service developments. Some of the arguments presented in the original text are echoed in this edition: people leaving hospital face an uncoordinated patchwork of local resettlement schemes, management and accountability of services at local level remains elusive and disparate, support given to carers far understates acknowledged levels of need, educational and day provision are dominated more by service considerations than planning for individual users.
