Community care: Policy imperatives, joint planning and enabling authorities

Abstract

The community care legislation stresses the importance of collaboration at each stage of implementation. The paper sets two aspects of the changes—joint planning and the move to contracting—in context. The prospects for a more genuinely collaborative form of joint planning are then reviewed and it is argued that the role that the voluntary sector was invited to play in the production of community care plans was part of a larger shift in voluntary—statutory relations. Contracting is examined in relation to the idea of a 'redefined partnership' between the statutory and voluntary sectors and is conceptualised as a process of 'formalisation', The paper highlights the variety of levels of collaboration needed and the problems managers and practitioners face in coping with the 'cascade of change'.