Policy and finance for community care: the new mixed economy

<p>The aim of this chapter is to examine the implications of the mixed economy for mental health care. The community care<p><p>reforms are introduced in Section 2. Section 3 then presents a conceptual framework for describing and analysing the developing mixed economy of mental health care. We then progress from the specific care of the voluntary sector using data from a recent survey (Section 4) to the complex inter-relationships of services and funders for community care (Section 5). Section 6 discusses the characteristics of markets with reference to mental health care, while Section 7 explores the potential for joint commissioning. Our conclusions in Section 8 sum up the ‘state of the mixed economy’ in mental health care and highlights the developing roles for, inter alia, markets and joint commissioning.