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The publication of the Coalition Government's NHS White Paper seems to be proposing a revitalised relationship between adult social care and the NHS. This article explores these proposals and concludes that, although they hold promise, they may be insufficiently robust to overcome the priority the White Paper gives to competition rather than collaboration. It is suggested that social care is in danger of becoming a handmaiden to health care in an increasingly privatised market that could move towards an insurance‐based model of funding.

This article offers a personal view of the White Paper, Our Health, Our Care, Our Say, from a service user perspective. The Minister for Care Services, Liam Byrne, has stressed that the philosophy of the White Paper is based on strengthening personal control over support, prevention and the integration of health, social care and other services. This discussion examines the emphasis on health over social care in the presentation of the White Paper. It puts the document in the broader context of social care policy development over the last 20 years, and relates it to the views of service users expressed in consultations leading up to its publication. It considers the White Paper's potential ambiguity, its relation with resource issues and what next steps may be needed to take forward its positive principles.

Choosing Health is the first government public health white paper since Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation, published in 1999. It aims to make the NHS ‘a health service, not a sickness service,’ and is strongly influenced by the Wanless reports. This paper presents a critical review of the main elements of the white paper that relate to mental health, and sets out the actions that policy makers and service delivery organisations need to take to build genuinely mental health promoting public services within a mentally healthy society.

This article begins a series of three about making a reality of integration policy in health and social care at individual, functional and cultural levels.

The paper outlines messages from policy debate and the Adult Social Care White Paper about the benefits to individuals and carers of improvements in integration. It follows the progress of a 91‐year‐old widow during a recent six‐week stay in hospital, and the difficulties she and her daughter encountered through professional and service faultlines and information blocks.

The paper questions the White Paper proposal for named professionals to coordinate care for people with complex needs, and argues that the benefits of integration will not be achieved without a significant change of culture. It outlines later papers exploring a functional model of integration, and examining the implications of culture change for the relationships between health and social care, between professionals and individuals, and between the Department of Health and the health and care system.

In “placing the individual at the centre”, the article grounds a series linking the newly‐published Care and Support White Paper and the emerging NHS reform programme to examine changes needed if integration is to benefit individuals and carers.

As one might expect after the formation of a new government, there has been a considerable amount of activity on the policy front in recent months, with a range of green and white papers and other consultations. In this article, we summarise just four areas of policy development that will primarily impact in England: the drug strategy, the mental health strategy, the public health White Paper and the Breaking the Cycle green paper on sentencing and rehabilitation.

The NHS White Paper (Department of Health, 2010) seems to herald the introduction of a greater role for local government in running health services in England than at any time since 1948. Partnership working between the NHS and local authorities is to be elevated to a higher level and a greater role for elected members is to be introduced to address the ‘democratic deficit’ in the centralised NHS. All of this will be underpinned by a raft of new inter‐organisational arrangements. Although these changes do indeed constitute a significant change, this article suggests that the impact may be less than many hope and expect.

THIS ARTICLE APPRAISES the Government's White Paper, The New NHS: Modern, Dependable, from the perspective of a health authority chief executive, outlining the context for developing health care, the joint challenges of the White Paper and the Green Paper, Our Healthier Nation, the role and potential of primary care groups (in detail), the developing role of the health authority, and the agenda for shaping and improving the delivery of health and health services. It ends with an appraisal of particular implications for community care.

As it is now some time since the publication of the Health White Paper, and there is currently a pause in the progress of the Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament, it seems timely to look at how the proposed changes to patient and public involvement (PPI) may develop. This paper seeks to address these issues.

The paper examines the proposals for PPI set out in the legislation and uses the findings of the authors' recent research to examine them.

The paper argues that the legislation, as currently written, contains nothing that will guarantee a more effective engagement with either patients or the public.

This is a fast moving field at present, and the eventual outcome of this major reorganisation is unclear. This paper uses evidence from previous studies to provide an overview of the issues relating to patient and public involvement in the National Health Service and highlights the potential problems in the proposals as they stand at present.

Public health in its modern sense estab‐lished itself during the end of the last century. A legitimate conclusion from a study of the last hundred years or so is that the mainspring of its work has been the state of health of populations and the articulation of their health needs. These needs encompass both the means to promote health and prevent disease, as well as the provision of health care.

The purpose of this paper is to consider whether the framework for integration initiated by the White Paper Liberating the National Health Service (NHS) is likely to be more successful than previous frameworks.

The paper formulates ten principles of integration derived from a historical literature review, and makes the comparison with principal features of new proposals for promoting integration between NHS and Local Government in England.

There is a relatively good fit between the principles and proposals but gaps were identified and implementation difficulties are already becoming evident especially in respect of the tension between localism and national accountability.

The conduct of the literature review is consistent with standard historical research methods but does not aim to comply with the protocols for systematic reviews in health sciences. It does not attempt to be based on a fully comprehensive search because of the time and other resources associated with its commissioning. Future empirical research will be necessary to establish the actual impact of the proposed legislative changes on relationships between the NHS and Local Government together with any changes to health and wellbeing outcomes at local level.

Local and national strategies for improving integration should be reviewed in the light of the principles set out here.

The paper should be of value to policymakers and policy analysts seeking to understand more systematically the implications of the current legislative proposals in the context of previous empirical and theoretical knowledge. It will also be of value as an up‐to‐date analytical account of an important dimension of the proposed health reforms in the context of longer term historical understandings frequently missing from the organisational memories of health and social care agencies.