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Valuing People outlined ambitious plans for improving services for people with learning disabilities in England. Strategies to realise these goals were to be taken forward through the new structure of learning disability partnership boards, based in the first instance on local joint investment plans (JIPs). This article reports findings from an analysis of the first round of learning disability JIPs, compiled as the implementation of the White Paper began, and reviews the implications for the development of robust local strategies and action plans.

Health improvement programmes (HImPs) and joint investment plans (JIPs) are becoming increasingly important mechanisms for modernising services. They bring new disciplines that sharpen up joint planning and provide a framework for making sure local partners• drive forward national priorities• listen to and assess the needs of local people• analyse the gaps and deficiencies in their services• are more transparent about what they are planning to do, why and how they are spending public money.This article provides an overview of these arrangements.

Clarity Over Finances is a non‐negotiable prerequisite of success in using joint investment plans to improve services to users. Health and local authorities should not under‐estimate the complexity of the task that lies before them — and government must be entirely clear about what it expects authorities to do.

Joint investment plans (JIPs) are becoming an important mechanism for progressing the Government's modernisation agenda. Their emphasis on partnership working and greater transparency of resources and investment, which involves key agencies making decisions together, offers a potentially much stronger brew than previous attempts at joint planning. The Community Care Division of the Nuffield Institute for Health has been involved with the JIP process since its inception, and has undertaken an evaluation of the first round of JIPs for older people's services, as well as being involved in the development of the current Welfare to Work documents. This article draws on our experience from these two pieces of work.

This paper reports key messages for policy makers, drawn from a workshop held for local health and social care staff with responsibilities for running or setting up short‐term residential rehabilitation for elderly and disabled people. The aim was to learn from each other's experiences and to provide a nuts‐and‐bolts framework for the development of local joint investment plans.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which relation-specific investments undertaken by the distributor favor the presence of various governance structures (formal contract and relational governance). Furthermore, it examines whether dependence moderates the effect of relationship-specific investments on these governance structures.

Survey data were gathered from 224 wholesalers from the food and beverage industry. Hypotheses were tested through regression analysis.

This study illustrates that property-based relationship-specific investments have a greater positive impact on the use of formal contracts than knowledge-based relationship-specific investments. Furthermore, knowledge-based relationship-specific investments have a greater positive impact on relational governance than property-based relationship-specific investments. The results also suggest that it is necessary to consider the moderating effect of cost-based dependence and benefit-based dependence. Finally, mixed governance structures (e.g. formal contracts combined with relational governance) have a positive impact on satisfaction and intention to maintain and extend the relationship.

The findings allow manufacturers to concentrate their efforts on mixed governance structures facilitating relationship-specific investments and benefit-based dependence from distributors to develop a competitive advantage.

Several investigations have obtained a relationship between investments in specific assets, governance structures and performance. Nevertheless, they have not identified different types of investments in specific assets. This study proposes that there are two types of relationship-specific investments: based on property and based on knowledge. Additionally, a two-dimensional model of dependence (cost-based and benefit-based) allows capturing the different theoretical spheres of this concept.

Bob Grove looks with sadness on the decision by the Department of Health not to follow through on the implementation of Welfare to Work Joint Investment plans. But this is not the end of the story — promises have been made and Bob believes that disabled people should ensure that they are kept.

This article describes efforts to develop a joint health and social services strategy for rehabilitation in one local authority area in response to national policy. It notes the effects of competing policy initiatives, of the shift in hospital provision to providing only acute care, and of failure to agree joint responsibility for the future development of such services.

In the second of two articles, the authors consider whether the evidence of joint commissioning's limited success has influenced the new partnership flexibilities. They conclude that, while they offer significant opportunity, their positive elements may be undermined by lack of recognition of the unavoidable complexity of the organisational environment in the health and social care field.

Primary care groups and trusts, social services and wider local authority departments are making good progress in developing partnerships in a rapidly changing policy environment. These partnerships are developing at different levels (strategic planning, operational service delivery), both with social services departments and with a wider range of local authority functions. This paper draws on the latest round of the three‐year national Tracker Survey of Primary Care Groups and Trusts. The partnerships developed by PCG/Ts are considerably broader than the original key collaboration required with local social services departments; this raises questions about the role of the social services representative on the PCG Board/PCT Executive Committee. Some of the traditional obstacles to partnerships ‐ particularly differences in organisational boundaries ‐ and the imperatives of national policy priorities are continuing to shape local collaborative activity.