Melody Carter shows how working together to improve housing can ensure healthy outcomes

At the end of last year the Department of Health published Liberating the Talents: Helping Primary Care Trusts to Deliver the NHS Plan (DoH 2002). This document presents a framework in which care and services will be improved by developing new roles and skills in the community nursing workforce. The document cites examples of good practice across the country and challenges primary care trusts to consider how change can be achieved in their own locality by working with a much wider range of agencies than before. Other government policy initiatives call for health providers and commissioners to look at housing and home improvements as a way of making a real difference to the lives of older and disabled people (Easterbrook 2002).