Partnership working and outcomes: do health and social care partnerships deliver for users and carers?

Working in partnership, both across social care and health and with service users, has been a persistent theme of the health and social care modernisation agenda in the United Kingdom. Despite a relatively underdeveloped evidence base, the development of health and social care partnerships has continued to feature in recent policy and legislative initiatives in the United Kingdom. At the same time there has been a major shift in focus towards the outcomes that support services deliver.

Moving towards integrated working in health and social care in Scotland: from maze to matrix.

The development of integrated working across health and social care has featured strongly in recent policy directives in both England and Scotland. This is part of a wider agenda of partnership and collaboration, with a range of options from the creation of unified structures as in the care trusts in England to localised arrangements for joint working between individual professionals. This article presents a detailed matrix of drivers and barriers to integrated working which has been developed through a number of case studies of community care practice pursued as part of work undertaken for the Joint Future Group of the Scottish Executive.

Prevalence and experience of harassment of people with mental health problems living in the community.

Background: The levels and experiences of harassment of people with mental health problems in the community compared with those of the general population have not been explored.

Aims: To measure the levels and experience of harassment experienced by people with mental health problems in the community in Scotland and compare them with the general population.

Method: Experiences of harassment were collected by interviewing 165 individuals with mental health problems and a control group of 165 people from the general population.