SHARED CARE

Shared Care is a term used in health care and social care in Great Britain. It describes the establishment of partnerships between professionals and laymen where they share a common goal. For example:- the improvement in the health of a patient where the patient needs to take a major degree of responsibility for his or her care, or an arrangement where the life of a disadvantaged person is improved by the joint efforts of a social service and an outside lay provider. To be true "shared" care the partnership is a genuinely equal one with neither partner being subservient nor superior.

For instance it is the concept of patients and complementary therapists sharing information as at shared-care.com which is "intended to be a community-driven "guidebook" system to help you find relevant information about complementary medicine and the help and self-help groups of related problem areas". It has sections on suitable services and products for any of the special types of its communities such as people with allergies or disabilities.

Shared Care is used in a social context to describe the activities of a British national charity called the Shared Care Network that provides short breaks for disadvantaged children [1] or for short term fostering, where there is significant input from the non-professional supervised by the professional. This is an example from Birmingham Council Social Services Department[2]. There are examples throughout the country of this usage, with all age groups and types of disabilities or social problems.

The Child Support Agency uses it for a very specific purpose "it refers to each of the separated parents having the children with them part of the time, so that direct expenditure is shared too" [3]

In a more health orientated context the term can be used for the schemes for substance abuse as in this example from Cambridge [4] and Diabetes as in this example from Salford. [5]. Again there are many of these schemes available nationwide.