Deinstitutionalisation and Community Services in Greater Glasgow

Knowledge of what makes for quality in adult learning disabilities services does not cascade directly down into grassroots practice. It is instead severely filtered and variously diluted through layers of national policy, local strategy and administrative complexity. In the current difficult climate, quality is not obtained without exposure to the strains and stresses inherent in the dynamics of the health and welfare bureaucracies and their attempts at partnership. Following a largely chronological and descriptive account of attempts to change and develop services in the Greater Glasgow area in the mid‐1990s, consideration is given to the effect of these ‘filters’ in the context of the Greater Glasgow Joint Learning Disability Project.