European Perspectives on Community Care

Abstract

The forces which have influenced the development of community care policy and practice have not been confined to the UK. The governments of other countries in Western Europe have also had to address the consequences of demographic changes, high levels of unemployment, deep recession and public expenditure pressures on the rôle of the family in caring, on the costs of institutional care, on the notion of the mixed economy of welfare, on the problems of inter-agency collaboration and on the voice of the service user or carer (Tester, 1996).