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Information provision services to the general public have, since their inception in South Africa, been biased towards the white minority in the community. In reaction to the imbalanced position and in an effort to re‐dress inadequacies experienced through the existing public library system, alternative community‐driven information provision services were introduced. In this study, the three existing information provision services currently operating in South Africa, i.e. the public library services, community libraries and resource centres, will be discussed and compared. The strengths and weaknesses of each system will be examined, and suggestions put forward as to possible adaptations that can be made in order to develop information provision services, servicing all inhabitants of the country on an equal basis.

There is a strong tradition of integration in rural community hospitals which has been largely unrecognised in the past. The national strategy for health in England now gives community hospitals a central role in providing integrated health and social care, in a policy referred to as ‘care closer to home’. The evidence emerging from international and national studies is demonstrating the benefit of the community hospital model of care. Public support for community hospitals over their 100‐year history has been strong, with value being placed on accessibility, quality and continuity. There is, however, a tension between the national policy and the current financial pressures to close or reduce services in one in three community hospitals in England. Innovative ways of owning and managing these services are being put forward by communities who are actively seeking to maintain and develop their local hospitals. The challenge is to demonstrate that community hospital services are valued models of person‐centred integrated care, and to demonstrate their contribution to the health and well‐being of their communities.

Persistent and particular health and social care challenges face socially excluded groups and communities in the more deprived areas of the country. Involvement of communities in design and delivery of services, including those whose voices have traditionally not been heard, will help to shape services to meet better their health and well‐being needs. Effective community‐led commissioning can empower individuals and communities by giving them the chance to voice their needs, while local ownership of the process will increase the relevance of services, and improve their uptake and sustainability. For commissioners, the ‘World Class’ commissioning agenda is about connecting development of services with the real requirements of communities, and increasing engagement and satisfaction with services.

This study aims to ascertain the forms of social enterprises created for public services and the dimensions of community-based management of public facilities. It seeks to understand how community-based facilities management (CbFM) can apply to the management of public services created by social enterprises in developing communities.

The study examines research studies on CbFM through a scoping review of papers published between 1997 and 2022.

The scoping review revealed that there are five dimensions of CbFM for developing communities: CbFM, urban facilities management, sustainable CbFM, urban infrastructure management and management of community hubs. It also revealed that social enterprises have been used to manage services, and for social inclusion, and to increase the efficiency of tangible infrastructure in communities.

The scoping review included literature from 1997 to 2022 to understand the development trends in CbFM in developing communities. It is possible that literature from a broader timeframe could have produced more in-depth understanding of the subject investigated.

The paper articulates a framework of CbFM models for public services in developing communities and developed a database of the relevant studies, which can further guide future researchers, stakeholders and policymakers in this area.

The comprehensive review produced a framework for community management of public services. It also identified that there is a paucity of literature on social infrastructure. It highlighted the need for skillsets to support community-based enterprises. There are limited studies that touch on the development of performance indicators for developing communities.

Clients often report reluctance in attending publicly funded mental health services, particularly when those services are provided at segregated and stand‐alone locations well known to the wider community. One way to address this stigma‐driven reluctance to attend appointments is to deliver mental health services in combination with employment services, education and training, income support, housing, disability support, legal services, and other health services, as an essential suite of community services. This paper aims to research this possibility.

The paper outlines the early planning and implementation phases of the Huntly Community Link project.

The paper finds that ongoing joint governance and management, clear on‐site leadership, and an evaluation strategy are needed to ensure joint service delivery goals are attained.

Several important practical issues emerge. For instance, differences in organisational culture take time to change towards greater support for the new joint service delivery goals.

Early indicators suggest that the Huntly Community highly values the joint delivery of these essential services from a suitable purpose designed building.

This is an innovative New Zealand program that promises to reduce attendance stigma by nesting the delivery of publicly‐funded mental health services among a broad mix of other essential community services.

Recently arrived older refugees in resettlement countries are a particularly vulnerable population who face many risks to their health and well‐being, and many challenges in accessing services. This paper reports on a project undertaken in Victoria, Australia to explore the needs of older people from 14 recently arrived refugee communities, and the barriers to their receiving health and aged care. Findings from consultations with community workers and service providers highlight the key issues of isolation, family conflict and mental illness affecting older refugees, and point to ways in which policy‐makers and service providers can better respond to these small but deserving communities.

This research project explored how refugee community organisations (RCOs) could become more involved in the government's health agenda to improve the level of consultation and responsiveness in the design and provision of mental health services for ethnic minorities. The method involved a review of relevant literature, interviews with refugee community organisation leaders and community workers, and a survey of refugee service users' involvement with RCOs. The research found that the causes and effects of mental ill health in refugees as understood by interviewees were consistent with much of the literature in this area. The mental health needs of refugees are very similar across nationalities and ethnicities, and distinct from those of the general population and of other migrant groups. Appropriate responses, as understood by community leaders and professional community workers, are currently only partly and insufficiently provided by statutory health services, and there is extensive unmet need.

Some libraries and information services are quite definitely user‐centred; some think they are but are not always; some seem to be designed for librarians rather than users. The purpose of this monograph is to encourage the development of libraries to meet the perceived needs of users — I hope it will be found useful by librarians and information workers as well as by students.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how conflict-affected communities in Ukraine (the Lugansk region) can develop sustainable mental health services in decentralised settings. The main interest focuses on community stakeholders’ perception of their problems and solutions that communities can create to achieve better mental health coverage.

A series of roundtables (RTs) (4 RTs, 62 participants overall), accompanied by interactive brainstorming techniques, were conducted with communities’ representatives/stakeholders from the East of Ukraine (Lugansk region, a government-controlled area) during the year 2021. Participants (health, mental health, social care workers and administration representatives) were provided with the opportunity to discuss mental health services’ development challenges and create affordable solutions for their communities. Results of discussions were submitted to qualitative analysis and offered for review by participants.

Decentralisation in Ukraine led to allocating funds alongside responsibilities for developing the services to communities. Most of the communities appear not to be ready to acknowledge the role of mental health services, entirely relying on the existing weak psychiatric hospital-based system. Awareness-raising interactive capacity-building activities for the community leaders and decision-makers effectively promote community-based mental health services development. Five clusters of challenges were identified: leadership, coordination and collaboration problems; infrastructure, physical accessibility and financial problems; mental health and primary health-care workforce shortage and lack of competencies; low awareness of mental health and available services and high stigma; war, crises and pandemic-related problems. Communities stakeholders foresaw seven domains of action: increasing the role of communities and service users in the initiatives of governmental bodies; establishing in the communities local coordination/working groups dedicated to mental health service development; developing the community-based spaces (hubs) for integrated services provision; embedding the mental health services in the existing services (social, administrative and health care); mental health advocacy and lobbying led by local leaders and service users; increasing capacity of communities in financial management, fundraising; developing services by combining efforts and budgets of neighbouring communities.

The study has potential limitations. Participants of the roundtables were mostly appointed by local authorities, so some of them didn`t have a motivation for mental health services development. Service users were involved only from the facilitators` side, not from the side of communities; therefore, it was impossible to include their view of problems and solutions. Obtained data were limited to the opinion of local professionals, administration workers and other local stakeholders. The human rights aspect was not clearly articulated in the tasks of the roundtables.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the paper is original in terms of its topic (connecting decentralisation and local stakeholders’ engagement for understanding the challenges of mental health services development) and research strategy (engagement of Ukrainian communities, qualitative analysis of the discussion results and applying the best practices and international recommendations to the local context).

The purpose of this paper is to explore the presence and nature of integrated care in community hospitals.

Staff reported their views and experiences of integrated care in 48 questionnaires for a Community Hospitals Association programme. An analytical framework was developed based on eight types of integration, and the community hospital services concerned were grouped into nine service categories.

Staff reported multiple types of integration, averaging four types (median), with a range of two to eight (of the eight types studied). The types of integration most frequently reported were multidisciplinary care, and community hospital/secondary care and community hospital/primary care. Integration with communities, patients and the third sector featured in many of the services. Integration with social care and local authorities were least frequently reported. Services with the highest number of types of integration (5+) included palliative care, maternity services and health promotion. Staff reported that commitment was a positive factor whilst a lack of staff resources hindered partnership working.

Staff volunteered to be part of the programme which promoted good practice, and although the findings from the study cannot be generalised, they do contribute knowledge on key partnerships in local hospitals. Further research on the types, levels and outcomes of integrated care in a larger sample of community hospitals would build on this study and enable further exploration of partnership working.

The analytical framework developed for the study is being applied by staff and community groups as a tool to help assess appropriate partnership working and help identify the scope for further developing integrated care. The evidence of integrated working is available to inform those commissioning and providing community health services.

This study has shown that integrated working is present in community hospitals. This research provides new knowledge on the types of integrated care present in a range of community hospital services. The study shows a tradition of joint working, the presence of multiple simultaneous types of integration and demonstrated that integrated care can be provided in a range of services to patients of all ages in local communities.