Community care: a new golden age of care?

Abstract

In 1981, the government announced its commitment to the ‘new’ policy of community care for those with learning disabilities, mental health problems, physical handicaps and the elderly. This policy made the position that hospital care was bad and community care good — overtly a philosophical change, although some cynics suggested that it assumed, erroneously, that community care was less costly than institutional care and that all health activities are reducible to unit cost.