MANAGING LOCAL MIXED ECONOMIES OF CARE

It is widely agreed that there has been a move within the United Kingdom away from one welfare state as traditionally understood towards a mixed economy of welfare, in which public, private, voluntary, and not-for-profit sectors are expected to work together. How the new mixed economy is expected to work is less clear. In this paper we focus on two crucial aspects of the change with respect to care services-in emergent local mixed economies of care-with the help of case studies drawn from Buckinghamshire and Birmingham. We stress the need to recognise the role of local differences in the construction and interpretation of mixed economies of we, so that there is not just one, but may be many (locally distinctive) mixed economies. And we emphasise the need to take into account the rise of managerialism as a means of dealing with problems of coordination within local mined economies, particularly because of the way in which it may undermine alternative forms of coordination and control.