AT long last a shake-up in services for the mentally ill, involving care in the community, is to take place.

The options set out by Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell in a green paper would see the creation of mental health authorities, taking over responsibilities now shared between health and local authorities.

But still this government will not accept that they caused the problem in the first place.

Care in the community has been nothing short of a shambles.

Too many seriously ill mental patients have been discharged from hospital without proper arrangements for their care in the world outside.

It is a year since John Major expressed concern at the way mental health services were being run in the wake of a number of well-publicised killings by the mentally ill.

Mr Major argued that poor co-ordination between health and social services appeared to be the key failure which allowed patients to slip through the net.

That was only a small part of the problem.

It was John Major's government which oversaw the closure of dozens of mental wards throughout the country.

There are those who cannot and ,in some instances, never will cope with life outside a mental hospital.

Tragically, lives have been lost because this simple fact of life has been ignored by the reformers and the administrators.

There were huge public outcries whenever a former psychiatric patient killed.

But one only has to look around our towns and cities to realise there are thousands of other people, mentally inadequate to a lesser degree, who cannot cope.

Many are clearly not capable of dressing or eating properly.

These pathetic outcasts find themselves in this position through no fault of their own.

The reformers have dispensed with the facilities which once housed them.

Talk of better liaison between services and an improved management structure is all very well.

But that will be of very little help to those who need constant supervision.

It does not matter how sophisticated the management system is...if you are managing a dire service, it will remain dire.

We would never advocate a return to the asylum system. That was barbaric and a throw back to the last century.

But it is clear that more psychiatric wards and nurses are needed.

It is high time the government and the health authorities admitted that care in the community has been a dreadful failure.

The whole mental health machine needs a complete overhaul with resources allocated for the patients who need in-house care during the course of their illness.

Fiddling with the admin structure is simply not good enough.

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