Community care is intended to enable people to lead independent lives at home or in local residential units for as long as they are able to do so. For many years there has been a trend in Britain for care for elderly people and those with mental or physical problems to be shifted from hospitals and into community settings. In 1988 Sir Roy Griffiths’s report to the Secretaries of State for Social Services, Community Care: Agenda for Action, advised on the best use of public funds to provide effective community care. The White Paper Caring for People, published in 1989, outlined the government’s ideas for developing these proposals further. The plans were then enshrined in law with the National Health Service and Community Care Act of 1990.