Written to meet the need for concise explanation of the key legal issues in community care, this comprehensive A to Z gives the reader immediate access to the definitions they are seeking, and is the first book to summarise systematically many of the recent legal cases. The book approaches community care by breaking it down into individual terms such as assessment, criteria of eligibility, home help, needs, unreasonable decisions, and then explaining the legal and practical implications of each term in plain language. This approach enables specific issues to be explored quickly and concisely, and also cross-referenced to summaries of Acts of Parliament and judicial review cases decided in the law courts. Community care is currently afflicted by escalating legal uncertainties, apparent disparity between people's needs and available resources, and intensified scrutiny by judges. As a response to this situation, the book provides the busy reader - practitioner, adviser, lawyer, policymaker or academic - with an effective and essential tool, usable at different levels of detail, to get to grips with this complex and confusing subject.