ABSTRACT
In recent debates over health and welfare provision, ‘community care’ has become a key concept, especially in relation to provision for the elderly, the infirm, and the mentally and physically disabled. Yet what is meant by this concept and how it is to be implemented, is continually being contested. Such difficulties of definition are not unique to the present crisis in social policy. Some of the earliest debates concerning ‘community’ and health care also surrounded the development of maternal and infant welfare services in the early twentieth century. These services were among the first state measures in health and welfare, and were as strongly influenced by particular concepts of ‘community’ as are the health care policies being formulated today. None the less, while present policies are largely being enacted against a background where welfare is increasingly being farmed out to the voluntary sector, those of the past took place at a time when the reverse was happening – when the state was beginning to take a more active role in the provision of welfare. 1
