The landscape of housing and social care is changing fast. Demand for housing to meet a variety of social needs is growing against a backdrop which includes the advent of Supporting People, people with learning difficulties clamouring for more independence through having their own homes, and the loss of more than 20,000 places in residential care for older people over the last two years. Government policy has focused increasingly on choice and independence, more intermediate care and better rehabilitation services offered through health, social care and housing partnerships, more extra care housing in partnership with housing associations, and more intensive home-based support. Initiatives such as the National Service Frameworks for Older People and for Mental Health,

bed-blocking fines, the Valuing People white paper, and the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000 are forcing social care agencies to think much more constructively about the housing needs of their clients. The risk is that "choice" means only choice for the well off while "independence" means isolation. The challenge facing agencies is that neither of these will do: choice must be choice for all and independence must mean having control over your own life with the means to achieve it. As professor Gerald Wistow once put it, people acquire "independence through interdependence". Here, we look at the various ways in which agencies are rising to the challenges that confront them.