In the Netherlands the pursuit of a community based care results in mental health care being more and more delivered at the home of the client. The most recent version of this type of care is called 'psychiatric home care'. A qualitative survey of the Inspection of Health Care in 15 projects shows that there are roughly two types of psychiatric home care: long-term psychiatric home care, that aims to substitute a psychiatric hospital stay, and short-term or acute psychiatric home care, that aims to prevent hospitalisation in crisis-situations. Partly because of the young age of the projects there is still no specific psychiatric home care method nor a specific quality assurance system. The uncertainty of project-financing adds to this situation. Nevertheless most projects are working on protocols, developing quality assurance instruments and offer their employees skills-training. Once embedded in the existing quality control and finance structures psychiatric home care can become a regular mental health care service.