When Social Services are Local: The Normanton Experience

In the early 1980s in Britain the organisation of the personal social services had come under increasingly critical scrutiny. The establishment of large social services departments following re-organisation in the early 1970s had led, some argued, to the emergence of services which all too often were over-centralised, fragmented and crisis-oriented in their approach.

In attempts to break out of this reactive system and to fashion services which were more coherent and preventive, a growing n...