Developmental Social Care: Experimental Community Mental Handicap Teams in Nottinghamshire

Abstract

SUMMARY Social care is an important field of practice in which policy proposals and prescriptions need to be tested systematically against field experience. The article reports on research evaluation of a 'field experiment' in the use of multi-disciplinary teams to develop as well as to deliver services. Although based in the care of people with learning disabilities, the work outlined and the conclusions drawn have a far wider relevance. They relate to such key issues as: the long-standing debate about specialist and generic modes of working; the advocacy of teams based in small neighbourhood patches and the assertion that such teams are the best way of working with informal networks and non-statutory agencies; the official enthusiasm for 'mobilizing resources' and casting social services in an enabling role; and the advocacy of a demarcation between 'purchaser' and provider roles. Above all, the article addresses the issue of how sufficient, varied, and responsive services may be generated in order to make a reality of community care. The importance of social care can hardly be overestimated. It involves very large client groups (elderly, physically disabled, and mentally ill people as well as people with learning disabilities); constitutes one of the major tasks of the personal social services; and it is an arena in which hopes and aspirations have consistently been disappointed (Walker, 1982; Webb and Wistow, 1986; Martin, 1987). Yet the post Seebohm decades have not resolved the question of how best to set about it or what, quintessentially, should be the role of social workers within it (Webb and Wistow, 1987; Pinker, 1990). These shortcomings lie behind the proposals and policies outlined by the Audit Commission (1986), Sir Roy Griffiths (1988) and the govern ment in its White Paper, Caring for People (1989). But these pro nouncements should not be taken as the fount of all wisdom. Ideas developed and tested in the field should also command attention and in this paper we highlight one, highly pertinent, innovation in social care.