‘Community Care’ has become the psychiatric catch phrase of the eighties. With this burgeoning interest go the difficulties of working not just with a multi-disciplinary team but with Social Services and voluntary agencies, a move from our ‘ivory towers’ which not all psychiatrists will view with relish. Despite initial antipathy more psychiatrists are coming to accept the fact that moving patients out of long-stay facilities is a reality and new ways of working have to be found for these patients as well as acute patients.