ABSTRACT
UK social policy has pursued radical organizational changes since the 1980s; amongst these is a planned shift from institutional to community-based care for people who are categorized as dependent and/or deviant.1 This shift stretches across different sectors of public services from acute medicine to social care and the criminal justice system. In all cases it is assumed that by releasing individuals from large institutions and by placing them in settings constructed as ‘the community’ or ‘family-like’ they will be both more independent and more integrated socially. My analysis focuses on mental health services but invites comparison across a wider range of institutions. My central argument is about the concern of such institutions with the related but conflicting functions of care and control. I suggest that, although individuals have been empowered to some extent, the planned changes have encouraged reproduction of the structures which were the object of reform.
