This book presents a comparative analysis of the work of mental health social
workers and community psychiatric nurses. Both professions lay claim, to a
considerable degree, to the same ‘territory’, and, in view of developments in
community care, the examination of the relative merits of the claims of these
professions to this territory, is of considerable importance. The findings,
which are ultimately favourable to social workers, are bound to be
controversial, since occupations do not generally willingly leave territory to
which they have previously laid claim. This, however, cannot be helped, and
I have attempted to be scrupulously fair by working with meanings common
to both professions.