Mr Hallas' essay is concerned with the development of Community Health Councils as participating bodies without direct power in the NHS, and gives some insight into what they can effectively do.
Professor Ashford's and Dr Butt's paper deals with the use of statistical models and methods to determine the structure and magnitude of costs of hospital in-patient care. Above all it has a practical application, since it explores the implications of such studies in the context of current procedures for monitoring, planning, and resource allocation within the NHS, topics likely to perplex the 1980s.
The essay 'Handicapped children and their families' from the multidisciplined group in Exeter is based on a study of all children born within the city of Exeter between the years 1967 and 1971 and which identified all those who during their first years of life developed a handicapping condition of prenatal and perinatal origin. It shows what can be done as a practical exercise by any authority in the health and welfare field, to identify the unmet needs of handicapped children and their families as a preliminary to social action.
There is no common theme running through the collection; but again such essays illustrate the highly complex nature of the NHS and a further selection of its problems for which there are no simple solutions. Together with those in the previous eleven collections, they indicate the wide range of interests which must be served and utilized in the development and improvement of health services in all their aspects, which is a prime purpose of the Trust.