Creating ‘NHS local’: a new relationship between PCTs and local government

Introduction In recent months, partnership working between health and social care has had a bad press. Although the health and social care White Paper (Department of Health, 2006a) sets a clear strategic direction for community health and social services, PCT reorganisation and NHS financial difficulties have inevitably focused health care management attention on internal NHS issues. In academic circles, a number of researchers are increasingly wondering if the evidence really exists to support the assumption that partnerships lead to better outcomes for service users (see, for example, Dowling et al., 2005; Glasby et al., 2006), with one set of commentator describing partnership as “the indefinable in pursuit of the unachievable” (Powell and Dowling, 2006, p.305).