Integrated Care – Real or Illusory Solution for a Higher Quality in Serving the Population?

If a physical or mental problem may be, as causality and treatment, exclusively medically approached, a social problem is never exclusively social, embodying ramifications that affect all the aspects of human life. In this case, it is needed a proper approach which to provide complex, rapid, effective and efficient answers. The integrated care is such a proper approach. Unlike others, the Romanian society had identified and defined in a slower and heavier pace its real problems, delaying thus the process of formulating and implementing appropriate solutions in order to improve its functioning. But the last strategies and reforms, both from the medical and social domains, could represent productive steps towards adequately addressing these problems. And if the society’s proper functioning depends on the functioning of each individual – and vice versa, it stands out the necessity to provide adequate support for individuals, families and communities in order to identify and better manage their resources – and there is a public agreement on the fact that the health is, par excellence, both means and end, both resource and goal. In this context, the concept of empowerment, applied in communitary context, represents an appropriate and available solution to generate development and better quality of life.

Keywords: integrated care, social work, health, social, community