ABSTRACT
Case management offered a means for managing and deploying staff and other resources, for putting together combinations of services, and for setting client outcome goals. It was an enlightened decision to build case management, albeit loosely, into the demonstration programme proposals drawn up in 1983. Case management is one of the central planks of government community care policy, as spelt out in the 1989 White Paper and developed in a subsequent implementation document alongside the assessment task. Although case management arrangements in Britain had previously been explored in the delivery of services to elderly people, the demonstration programme offered the first chance to examine the methods for people with mental health problems, learning difficulties or physical disabilities. When the local case management architecture had been designed by entrepreneurial managers, it was quite naturally seen in this light. Projects worked with long-stay hospital residents.
