ABSTRACT
The role of housing was largely ignored in the development of central government’s policy on community care. Some provisions of the community care legislation do not apply in unitary authorities and thus the expectation might be that this will affect actual practice. While community care has been a touchstone of policy for many years, attempts to define it have apparently proved ‘rather sterile’. Care in the community requires housing for its fulfilment because without it one cannot define the make-up of the community. In 1981, the government suggested that ‘Care in the community should increasingly become care by the community’. The chapter considers the response to community care policy of the non-London homeless persons unit's (HPUs). It explores the effect community care had on the HPUs’ assessment process. In large HPUs, most communication between the two departments was by telephone.
