ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the wider policy context of commissioning and integrating services. It reports that there are over 160,000 voluntary organisations and over 15 million people volunteering each month in the UK. Other concerns about the health of the voluntary sector in the current political and economic climate include a loss of funding, weak charitable giving and the increased concentration of resources to a small number of large charities. The importance of effective integration between health and social care services is another long-running issue, now more intense than ever because of the pressures of increasing demand and tightly limited resources. The integration of health and social care, and of the four sectors of the mixed economy, are prominent goals of current social policy. The chapter shows how difficult all this is in a context of tight policy control from central government, and desperately tight financial resources.
