ABSTRACT
This chapter overviews the implementation of devolution policies in Sweden and England, and compares outcomes, focusing upon political steering and interactions between different levels of government. Both Sweden and England developed similar policies to devolve mental health social care in the 1990s, with visions of different public-sector organisations working in harmony to co-ordinate client-centred services. Mental health social care is a complex subject sitting on the boundaries between different territorial (central/local) and sectoral (health/social care) priorities and objectives. Petersson contends that the political management of policy implementation can be evaluated by four mechanisms of political influence and control: rules and regulation, finance, organisation, and staffing. In England, social care staff, especially social workers, have increasingly come under government control. A major social policy reform in Sweden does not appear to have created a specific role for the main social care profession, social work.
