ABSTRACT
The thirty-year period from 1949 to 1979 marked a time of rapid and wideranging social, demographic, economic, and cultural change in Britain, all of which considerably affected urban and rural communities, not least in their attitudes towards and expectations from community health care provision. In the previous chapter we discussed the introduction of the NHS and the obstacles that prevented the representatives of district nursing from participating in its formulation. We consider in this chapter the transfer of responsibility for the district nursing service from the QNI and voluntarily organisations into the hands of local government. The effects of consequent changes in the training, supervision, and employment of district nurses will be viewed alongside other changes that directly affected their role, working arrangements, and consequently their professional outlook and image. A key aspect to this was the move towards a practice-based, community-care team and the drive for a nationally, professionally recognised, specialised district-nurse training. Drawing on oral histories, these changes as well as the later implications of NHS reorganisation in 1972, are explained in more practical terms to show how the nurse and patient (and informal carers) were affected and what impact this had on their intra-relationships as well as professional inter-relationships.
