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Involving communities in health service planning in primary care
Author(s) -
Kirk Sue,
Bailey Jackie,
Burkey Yvonne
Publication year - 1997
Publication title -
health and social care in the community
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.984
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1365-2524
pISSN - 0966-0410
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2524.1997.tb00137.x
Subject(s) - outreach , social welfare , public relations , business , nursing , service delivery framework , social work , resource (disambiguation) , service (business) , health care , local community , service provider , community health , welfare , medicine , economic growth , political science , public health , marketing , computer network , computer science , law , economics
Recent health service policy in the United Kingdom has emphasized the need to involve local people in health service planning. This paper will describe how local communities were involved in the development of Primary Care Resource Centres. These centres are designed to provide a base for the delivery of a range of health, social welfare and information services within a community setting. Four centres in the process of being developed in one region were selected for in‐depth study. The main method of data collection consisted of semi‐structured interviews with key “stakeholders”, namely purchasers and providers of primary health care, social care providers, hospital outreach staff and local community and voluntary group workers (Weiss 1983). This paper examines how the health service organizations developing the centres involved local communities in planning them and the obstacles and difficulties encountered. The paper suggests lessons that can be learned for future community involvement in the planning of local health services.