ABSTRACT
It is difficult to draw any clear dividing line between health care and the personal social services. This makes their separate systems of finance a problem. The personal social services as a distinct category really only date back to the 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act in England and Wales and slightly earlier in Scotland. The new social services departments inherited a diverse range of powers and duties drawn from many existing Acts of Parliament previously administered by different local authority departments. They shared responsibility with the National Health Service for the care of groups like the elderly, the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped where the boundary lines of responsibility were extremely vague. Until recently the largest part of a social service department's budget was devoted to residential care for the elderly, children, mentally ill and handicapped people and the physically disabled. The residential bias dated back to the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act.
