Gosling, George Campbell and Soanes, Stephen. (2009) Healthcare and the community in modern Britain. Family & Community History, Vol.12 (No.2). pp. 101-106. ISSN 1463-1180

Abstract

The papers in this focus section contribute to a broader historical debate regarding the relationship between 'healthcare and the people'. Opening the section, both thematically and chronologically, Richard Biddle's narrative begins with the community's changing healthcare needs before moving to consider the degree to which local services responded to these changes. A wider significance of his contribution is be found in his assessment of the nature and scale of those local services, provided publicly through the navy in an era when public provision was dominated by the poor law. Meanwhile, Stephen Soanes maps out a professional debate over the extent to which progress in mental hospitals could be achieved through the inclusion of the public. In doing so, Soanes highlights the professional reassertion that the community should be the subject rather than the agent of reform, passive rather than active. This theme is picked up by Leigh Merrick, who documents the sidelining of local authorities as vehicles for public representation within the newly established Scottish National Health Service. This is placed against a backdrop of central failure to resolve disputes, the lowly place given to local authorities under the hierarchical structure of the NHS and a lack of co-operation amongst local authorities themselves. It is, therefore, the notion that the community has been consistently alienated from the governance of public healthcare that dominates these papers.

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