The conference aimed to bring together practitioners in housing, social services and psychiatry; to explore the links and gaps, the successes and the failings; and to point out some signposts for future development of service to meet needs. In particular, the conference explored three themes: 1) the varying definitions of need within and between services; 2) whether a unitary definition of need was appropriate or desirable; 3) to consider a social and environmental model of psychiatry. In doing so, an attempt was made to consider social descriptions of need to relate these to social models of the causes of mental health problems, hence to build a framework for a social and environmental model of care.