Trends in social and community services in the future

Abstract

Those of us involved in social welfare, either as service providers or as academic researchers, are concerned with the well being of people in our community - with levels of living, with peoples' access to quality care, and informal social supports - in short with standards of life and of living. The majority of people in our modern, affluent, industrial society enjoy a standard of living that is envied the world over, but a very large minority miss out. It is the combination of three things - tangible resources, effective services and close companionship that our welfare structures are geared towards. Governments, voluntary agencies (like Legacy) and informal structures (like families and other local networks) each deliver what they can. All are under immense pressure in a changing world. The number of elderly people is increasing and this will bring a range of mounting health problems, income difficulties and high levels of dependency. What we are faced with is an explosion of social care, and one of the most difficult tasks facing us is to determine how to specify target populations who ought to receive the major focus of our attention, how to allocate the resources, and how to determine how the various care sectors - that is government, the voluntary sector, and the family, play their respective roles.