Welfare and the State: issues for the 1990s

Abstract

As we look to the last decade of this century, after almost a century of formal welfare state activity, we can't get away from the one fundamental part of our analysis, and that is how people live and how they ought to live are the central concerns of planners and practitioners in the welfare industry. All members of a society aspire to an adequate standard of living, an adequate set of community infrastructure supports and adequate human interaction. Let us call them tangible resources, effective support services, and close companionship. In very crude terms we can identify four service sectors which deliver these: the public sector; the community sector (often called the 'voluntary' sector); the commercial market sector and the informal sector.