Shared care involves the establishment of partnerships between professionals and laymen where they share a common goal. For example: the improvement in the health of a patient where there is patient empowerment

Patient empowerment

The patient empowerment concept, a recent outgrowth of the natural health movement, asserts that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives, not only in their personal behavior.According to advocates of the...

 to take a major degree of responsibility for his or her care, or an arrangement where the life of a disadvantaged person is improved by the joint efforts of a social service and an outside lay provider. To be true "shared" care, the partnership is a genuinely equal one with neither partner being subservient nor superior. Shared care is a term largely used in health care

Health care

Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

 and social care in Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

.

In social care of children

Shared care is used in a social context to describe the activities of organisations that provide short breaks for disadvantaged children or those that help enlist families for short term fostering. In each case there is significant input from the non-professional supervised by the professional. The practice is widespread with examples throughout the country of this usage, with clients from all age groups and types of disabilities or social problems.

The Child Support Agency

Child Support Agency

The Child Support Agency is a delivery arm of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission in Great Britain and the Department for Social Development in Northern Ireland...

 uses the term for a very specific purpose: "it refers to each of the separated parents having the children with them part of the time, so that direct expenditure is shared too."

In general health care

In a more mainstream health orientated context the term can be used for the schemes involving patient empowerment

Patient empowerment

The patient empowerment concept, a recent outgrowth of the natural health movement, asserts that to be truly healthy, people must bring about changes in their social situations and in the environment that influences their lives, not only in their personal behavior.According to advocates of the...

, targeted at medical problems as substance abuse

Substance abuse

A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...

 and diabetes, and in complementary medicine for such therapies as hypnosis

Hypnosis

Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...

 or Alexander Technique

Alexander Technique

The Alexander Technique teaches the ability to improve physical postural habits, particularly those that have become ingrained and conditioned responses...

where the therapist is an enabler rather than a paternalistic prescriber. Indeed Alexander Technique practitioners call themselves "teachers".