National Health Service 

      National Health Service (NHS), in Great Britain, a comprehensive public-health service under government administration, established by the National Health Service Act of 1946 and subsequent legislation. Virtually the entire population is covered, and health services are free except for certain minor charges.

     The services provided are administered in three separate groups: general practitioner and dental services, hospital and specialist services, and local health authority services. General practitioners or family physicians give primary medical care to a group of persons who register with them. These doctors and dentists operate their own practices but are paid by the government on a per capita basis (i.e., according to the number of people registered with them). Their services are organized locally by an executive council. Physicians are free to contract in or out of the service and may have private patients while within the scheme. Hospital and specialist services are provided by professionals on government salaries working in government-owned hospitals and other facilities that are under the direction of regional authorities called hospital boards. Local health authority services provide maternity and child welfare, posthospital care, home nursing, immunization, ambulance service, and various other preventive and educational services. They may also operate family-planning clinics, as well as day nurseries for children.

Personal social service

   The second type of social services consists of personalized support to safeguard the beneficiaries’ fundamental rights and facilitate their social inclusion as they support individual people or families with personal challenges or personal crises, such as debt, unemployment, drug addiction or family breakdown. Social services included under this second group are social work, counselling, advice, coaching, addiction rehabilitation, social rehabilitation, social housing, social inclusion, and crisis centres.

   However, some of these services could also be included under group one since they may at least fulfil one of the characteristics; for example, addiction rehabilitation is well regulated and is put in place for groups in many countries. We could say something similar of social work with children and families. In both cases, though, these services do not have conciliation as their primary aim. Their main characteristic is that they respond to individual or specific needs or problems.

   There is no clear or coherent category of 'personal social services', which cover both social work and 'social care', services to people which fall outside the remit of health services. In Britain, these departments have developed as a residual category of services not provided by other services. The categories include:

1. mentally ill people
2. elderly people
3. offenders
4. children who are abused, neglected or without support
5. physically sick and disabled people
6. people with learning disabilities

The services are provided within particular settings, including:

1. area teams of social work departments
2. day care
3. residential care
4. courts and juvenile courts or childrens panels
5. domiciliary care (services provided at home)
6.  hospitals (and sometimes medical practices).