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This article reports on research into the introduction of electronic service delivery (ESD) by social landlords, social services and charities conducted during 2000‐2001 which collected data on the progress that had been made in developing ESD. It included interviews with service users, including older people, people with a mental health problem and vulnerable young people. Potential benefits are balanced by the concerns of service users that they would be obliged to make use of ESD, which would risk the further marginalisation of some people who are often socially, politically and economically excluded.

Care and support agendas have tended to focus on the need to develop effective services to meet individualised needs within communities of interest. In contrast, community development and regeneration policy have concentrated on the needs of the broader ‘community’ but with little regard to support and care. Rarely do these two important policy domains meet in practice. A three‐year pilot initiative, the Hull Community Care Development Project, aimed to develop the capacity of local communities to respond to their own support and ‘community care’ needs. An independent evaluation documented how such an approach could begin to bridge community and care, and how this produced new challenges, communities prioritising broad neighbourhood issues over specific care and support concerns.

Youth homelessness has been recognised as a significant social problem since the late 1980s, and local authority homelessness strategies now include preventative services as a key area of development. However, youth homelessness prevention services are a relatively recent innovation in the UK, and there is only a small literature on their effectiveness. Safe Moves, developed by the Foyer Federation and Connexions during 2002‐2004, represents the first national youth prevention model and offers young people support with life skills, peer mentoring and family mediation. An independent evaluation by the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York concluded that Safe Moves was preventing homelessness for some young people, although the challenges of establishing projects in a predominantly crisis‐orientated culture were significant.

Anti‐social behaviour remains high on local and national policy agendas, and is a major area of concern for policy makers, local authorities, housing providers and communities. The Shelter Inclusion Project was set up in Rochdale in 2002 to develop an innovative model of floating support for households that are having difficulty complying with their tenancy agreements because of reported anti‐social behaviour, or who are homeless as a result. The three‐year pilot project (October 2002 to October 2005) is being evaluated by the Centre for Housing Policy, University of York. Interim findings (at September 2004) suggest that the project has made a positive impact on addressing anti‐social behaviour for its service users; most people are still in their same tenancy and anti‐social behaviour actions have ceased for those leaving the service.

This paper analyses 1,375 long‐term care placements approved by a London borough through a multi‐disciplinary ‘panel’. It suggests the need for increased attention to rehabilitation and to the capacity of residential homes to deal with cognitive disorder, and concludes that attainment of the new national standards for care homes will require improvements in the process of admission.