ABSTRACT
It is impossible to be precise about when partnership working in social care started. It has always been with us and always will be, which is both a truism and a recognition of its universality. Few early partnerships in social care are recorded, but that refl ects the way social history has been written about as much as their absence. History has traditionally been studied through events, and there are few column inches in successful partnerships, even today. Collaboration between individuals or organisations to ease the plight of poor and vulnerable people was as concealed historically as it is now. As far as we know, the earliest communities took direct responsibility for those in their midst needing care, in some ways a state of affairs we are constantly striving to recapture.
