Mental Health and Community Care
Under the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990, people with mental health problems were able to remain in their own homes whilst undergoing treatment. This situation raised some concerns when acts of violence were perpetrated against members of the public by a small minority of people who had previously been in psychiatric hospitals.
The National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990 was passed so that patients could be individually assessed, and assigned a specific care worker; in the unlikely event that they presented a risk they were to be placed on a Supervision Register. But there have been some problems with patients "slipping through the net" and ending up homeless on the street. There have also been arguments between Health and Social Services departments on who should pay.
In January 1998, the Labour Health Secretary, Frank Dobson, said the care in the community programme launched by the Conservatives had failed.
Read more about this topic: Care In The Community
Famous quotes containing the words mental health, mental, health, community and/or care:
“Mental health data from the 1950’s on middle-aged women showed them to be a particularly distressed group, vulnerable to depression and feelings of uselessness. This isn’t surprising. If society tells you that your main role is to be attractive to men and you are getting crow’s feet, and to be a mother to children and yours are leaving home, no wonder you are distressed.”
—Grace Baruch (20th century)
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
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—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“Justice begins with the recognition of the necessity of sharing. The oldest law is that which regulates it, and this is still the most important law today and, as such, has remained the basic concern of all movements which have at heart the community of human activities and of human existence in general.”
—Elias Canetti (b. 1905)
“To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavours with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)