ABSTRACT
The interaction of care systems has reached a depressing stage with the description of conflict and mutual lack of understanding. But as this is an account of fragmentation and integration as countervailing pressures in health care and as we now get to discuss integration, we have come to the crisis point, where we can look for signs that there could be a better outcome. Integration involves the taking back by different care systems of those parts in themselves that have been fragmented and projected outwards as being the responsibility of others. The integration in health care must involve a sharing of resources, including human resources. The wide-ranging organizational changes in health and social services may even be having an interesting effect among the less obviously expected outcomes. Social brokerage, unlike referral which tends to fit the individual to the resource, is about the integration of resources around the individual and maintains the individual in relation to his or her environment.
