Care Sector Guide

The care trust is an NHS organisation to which local authorities can delegate health-related functions to provide integrated local health and social care. Dropped from the Health Act as an expedient to get the legislation through with the dissolution of parliament in 2001, care trusts re-emerged to be established on a voluntary basis in partnership where there is a joint agreement at local level that this is the best way to offer services.

The first trusts were created in Bradford, Camden and Islington, Manchester and Northumberland and in October of that year another came into being in Witham, Braintree and Halstead. Local councils and primary care trusts (qv) and primary care groups (qv) can apply for them to be set up in their areas.

According to government they are not a takeover of existing health and local authority functions but a “pragmatic way forward” to “broaden the range of possible options” for integrated care.

They are single-system agencies that, it is said, make it easier to build services around patients and users. Initially, they will focus on elderly people and those with a mental illness but the Health Act does not specify their introduction only for single groups of clients. It is also envisaged that they offer a range of models – integrated teams offering care management, assessment and services; strategic commissioning; multi-disciplinary teams with a single NHS and local government budget; integrated provision with sheltered housing.

Care trusts can cover a local authority area, an area of more than one authority, an area covering a population which it registers or they can offer health services but not local authority services.

They are governed by a mixture of local councillors, health managers and patient and user representatives.