Explaining the Welfare State
Creators: name: Edwards, Keith
Publisher: name: London South Bank University
Year: 1979
Subjects: welfare state
social work

description: This thesis examines a wide range of explanations of the development of the Welfare State, with particular reference to social work. The aim is to achieve a better understanding of the origins and function of social work. When the research began in 1973, the standard works were by Pinker and Titmuss (1). In the last six years, there have been important advances in the understanding of the Welfare State. These have come in the theory of the state, in the study of urbanism, and the critique of welfare institutions (2). The period may be characterised by ‘crisis’, which has manifested itself at many levels, (theoretical, urban, political, social work, etc). There have been drastic cuts in public expenditure in the order of £8,100 million in 1976 alone. There was no increase in public expenditure between 1975/6 and 1976/7, and an actual fall by 3% in the following year (3). The impact of cuts has been seen in the deterioration of health and personal social services (4). Groups of clients or patients that were to get priority treatment have received less. Many of the government's own target figures on health are still a long way off, if they are ever to be reached (4). At a local level, it will mean, for example, that old people will have to stay in unsatisfactory circumstances in their own homes, with little help from the local authority, because there are to be no new residential homes (5). Meanwhile, in the literature of Social Administration, the Welfare State is assumed to be a humanitarian attempt to control market forces, and to establish new welfare institutions, based on different values. The main problematic area for social work is taken to be uncertainties of communications generated in the worker-client relationship (6). Nevertheless, and despite its own focus, Social Administration is concerned with issues of major political significance, whether that is the organisation of a retirement pension scheme, or changes in child care legislation. Instead, explanations and reform programmes are suggested in such a way that the impression is given that any government could use them. Social problems are discussed within a limited political framework; but it is not just a limitation of the political dimension, Problems are detached from the social and economic structures in which they are generated and maintained. They are isolated as pathological. Social workers’ clients are similarly pathological, and the purpose of social work is seen to be to search for new methods, and better treatments, that will more appropriately deal with these assorted pathologies. As the research progressed, it became clear that many of the assumptions of Social Administration needed to be critically analysed, and in some cases, rejected and reworked. Material from sources other than Social Administration, much of it produced within the last six years, provides many of these new directions. In social theory, there has been a move away from sociologies of interpersonal relationships, back towards systems and structural analysis (7). Welfare is about the related development of different sectors of the social formation; social policy is an ongoing response to changes in the social formation. Chapter One provides a critical reading of the previous attempts to explain the development of the Welfare State, and draws out some of the main characteristic failings. It also includes a brief elaboration of a model for social security spending as suggested by Piven and Cloward (8), and focuses on the position of women in the Welfare State. Chapter Two looks at the relationship between the economy and welfare, and concludes that inequality is preserved within the Welfare State. An alternative approach is suggested; this attempts to look at how welfare is involved in both consumption and production, Chapter Two therefore relies heavily upon the renewed interest in state expenditure, stimulated by the economic depression of the mid-1970s. Chapter Three approaches welfare from a slightly different viewpoint. It starts from the theory of the state, and the role of the State apparatus in the capitalist social formation, The chapter begins by examining the position of the state in the class structure. It goes on to assess the contribution of the Labour Party in government to the establishment of welfare institutions; and from there, the development of welfare as a political response to: social problems. Chapter Four moves from the structural determinants of welfare, .to spatial considerations of deprivation. It takes as its point of departure the theory of urbanism, as refined by the positive discrimination programmes of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The results of many of these initiatives have now been published. A concentration on problem areas reveals little about the people who live there. Little is added by the studies of the managers of local resources, the ‘urban gatekeepers’ (9). Rather poor areas reflect the problems and contradictions of the urban economy; one being the provision of welfare. Chapter Five is about social work. It is suggested that, although expenditure of local authority social services is relatively small, the origins of social work involve important ideological and economic issues. For instance, the Charity Organisation Society helped to rationalise the massive charitable spending, and the social distress, of the 1860s, by trying to change the behaviour and attitudes of the poor. In the present day, social workers continue to intervene in child care and family life; yet the research that does exists, although limited, questions their ability to do this. It questions social work's claim to particular skills, competence and success. Chapter Six tries to bring these themes together, and present social work in the context of the Welfare State, which is in turn placed within the context of the capitalist social formation. From there, suggestions are made for further work on the understanding of the Welfare State, and for a critical approach to social work.