social service

social service
social-service, adj.
organized welfare efforts carried on under professional auspices by trained personnel.
[1850-55]

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Introduction
also called  welfare service,  or  social work,  

      any of numerous publicly or privately provided services intended to aid disadvantaged, distressed, or vulnerable persons or groups. The term social service also denotes the profession engaged in rendering such services. The social services have flourished in the 20th century as ideas of social responsibility have developed and spread.

      The basic concerns of social welfare (social welfare program)—poverty, disability and disease, the dependent young and elderly—are as old as society itself. The laws of survival once severely limited the means by which these concerns could be addressed; to share another's burden meant to weaken one's own standing in the fierce struggle of daily existence. As societies developed, however, with their patterns of dependence between members, there arose more systematic responses to the factors that rendered individuals, and thus society at large, vulnerable.

      Religion and philosophy have tended to provide frameworks for the conduct of social welfare. The edicts of the Buddhist emperor Aśoka in India, the sociopolitical doctrines of ancient Greece and Rome, and the simple rules of the early Christian communities are only a few examples of systems that addressed social needs. The Elizabethan Poor Laws in England, which sought relief of paupers through care services and workhouses administered at the parish level, provided precedents for many modern legislative responses to poverty. In Victorian times a more stringent legal view of poverty as a moral failing was met with the rise of humanitarianism and a proliferation of social reformers. The social charities and philanthropic societies founded by these pioneers formed the basis for many of today's welfare services.

      Because perceived needs and the ability to address them determine each society's range of welfare services, there exists no universal vocabulary of social welfare. In some countries a distinction is drawn between “social services,” denoting programs, such as health care and education, that serve the general population, and “welfare services,” denoting aid directed to vulnerable groups, such as the poor, the disabled, or the delinquent. According to another classification, remedial services address the basic needs of individuals in acute or chronic distress; preventive services seek to reduce the pressures and obstacles that cause such distress; and supportive services attempt, through educational, health, employment, and other programs, to maintain and improve the functioning of individuals in society. Social welfare services originated as emergency measures that were to be applied when all else failed. However, they are now generally regarded as a necessary function in any society and a means not only of rescuing the endangered but also of fostering a society's ongoing, corporate well-being.

      The majority of personal social services are rendered on an individual basis to people who are unable, whether temporarily or permanently, to cope with the problems of everyday living. Recipients include families faced with loss of income, desertion, or illness; children and youths whose physical or moral welfare is at risk; the sick; the disabled; the frail elderly; and the unemployed. When possible, services are also directed toward preventing threats to personal or family independence.

      Social services generally place a high value on keeping families together in their local communities, organizing support from friends or neighbours when kinship ties are weak. Where necessary, the services provide substitute forms of home life or residential care, and play a key role in the care and control of juvenile delinquents and other socially deviant groups, such as drug and alcohol abusers.

Modern evolution
      In the advanced industrial societies the personal social services have always constituted a “mixed economy of welfare,” involving the statutory, voluntary, and private sectors of welfare provision. Although the role of personal social services is crucial, they account for only a small proportion of total welfare expenditures. The most substantial increases in expenditures have occurred in social security systems, which provide assistance to specific categories of claimants on the basis of both universal and selective criteria. The development of modern social security systems from the 1880s reflects not only a gradual but fundamental change in the aims and scope of social policy but also a dramatic shift in expert and popular opinion with regard to the relative significance of the social and personal causes of need.

      In the belief that personal shortcomings were the chief cause of poverty and of people's inability to cope with it, the major 19th-century systems of poor relief in western Europe and North America tended to withhold relief from all but the truly destitute, to whom it was given as a last resort. This policy was intended as a general deterrent to idleness. The poor-law relieving officer was the precursor of both the public assistance officials and the social workers of today in his command of statutory financial aid. The voluntary charitable agencies of the time differed on the relative merits of deterrent poor-law services on the one hand, implying resistance to the growth of statutory welfare, and on the provision of alternative assistance to the needy, coupled with the extension of statutory services, on the other hand. From the 1870s the Charity Organization Society and similar bodies in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere held strongly to the former option, and their influence was widespread until the outbreak of World War II.

 The settlement movement in Britain and the United States drew voluntary workers into direct contact with the serious material disadvantages suffered by the poor. The pioneer of this movement was the vicar Samuel A. Barnett (Barnett, Samuel A), who in 1884 with his wife and a number of university students “settled” in a deprived area of London, calling their neighbourhood house Toynbee Hall. Two visitors to this settlement soon introduced the movement into the United States—Stanton Coit, who founded Neighborhood Guild (later University Settlement) on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1886, and Jane Addams (Addams, Jane), who with Ellen Gates Starr (Starr, Ellen Gates) founded Hull House on the Near West Side of Chicago in 1889. From these prototypes the movement spread to other U.S. cities and abroad through Europe and Asia.

      The origins of modern social casework can be traced to the appointment of the first medical almoners in Britain in the 1880s, a practice quickly adopted in North American and most western European countries. The almoners originally performed three main functions: ascertaining the financial eligibility and resources of patients faced with the rising costs of medical care, providing counseling services to support patients and their families during periods of ill health and bereavement, and procuring adequate practical aids and other forms of home care for discharged patients. Elsewhere secular and religious charitable associations providing financial help, educational welfare, and housing for the poor began to employ social workers.

      By the turn of the century there were various schemes for organizing charitable work on “scientific” principles according to nationally agreed standards of procedure and services. In Britain, the United States, Germany, and, later, Japan, leading charities worked in conjunction with poor-law and public assistance authorities, an approach endorsed in 1909 in the majority report of the British Royal Commission on the Poor Law. The first schools of social work, usually run by the voluntary charitable agencies, appeared in the 1890s and early 1900s in London, New York City, and Amsterdam, and by the 1920s there were similar ventures in other parts of western Europe and North America and in South America. The training programs combined casework methods and other practical forms of intervention and support, with particular emphasis on working in cooperation with individuals and families to restore a level of independence.

      From the 1900s onward the surveys conducted by Charles Booth (Booth, Charles) in London and Seebohm Rowntree (Rowntree, B Seebohm) in York and by other researchers began to transform conventional views of the role of the state in social welfare and the relief of poverty, and the social causes of poverty came under scrutiny. At the same time, the scope of social work was growing, with the spread of settlement houses, to include group work and community action.

      In most countries social welfare services, or personal social services, rather than being separately organized and administered, are often attached to other major social services, such as social security, health care, education, and housing. This is explained by the course of their historical development. The means open to policy-making and administration in the personal social services are often incompatible. For example, the demands of the general integration and coordination of care programs can conflict with the provision of services that take due account of the needs of specific client groups. Also to be reconciled are the provision of individual services and the provision for family and neighbourhood needs.

      Statutory and voluntary social services have evolved in response to needs that could not be fully met by individuals either alone or in association with others. Among the factors determining the present nature of such services are, first, that the growth in the scale and complexity of industrial societies has added to the obligations of central and local governments. Second, the increasing wealth and productivity of industrial societies has heightened public expectations regarding standards of living and standards of justice, at the same time augmenting the material capacity to meet those expectations. Third, the processes of social and economic change have grown to such proportions that individuals are increasingly ill-equipped to anticipate and cope with the adverse effects of such change. Fourth, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to recognize and provide for the idiosyncratic needs arising from the interaction of social and personal life.

      Any family can experience crises that it is powerless to control. The hardships of ill health and unemployment can be compounded by loss of income; divorce and separation can impede the welfare and development of young children; and long-term responsibility for dependent relatives can impair the physical and emotional well-being of those who provide the care.

      A very small number of families experience such intractable problems that they require almost continuous help from personal social services. Some of these families present problems of deviant behaviour, including family violence and child abuse, irregular attendance or nonenrollment in school, alcohol and drug abuse, and crime and delinquency. Not all poor families, however, make heavy demands on social welfare services; indeed considerable hardship could be alleviated through more efficient use of existing services.

      Over time, social workers have acquired a special responsibility for people whose particular needs fall outside the aegis of other professions and agencies. Apart from the requirements of individuals and families with serious long-term social and emotional problems, personal social services meet a wide spectrum of needs arising from the more routine contingencies of living. Inevitably personal social services are primarily concerned with reacting to a crisis as it occurs, but today much effort is being invested in preventive work and in the enhancement of welfare in the wider community. In this respect comparison can be made with the traditional aim of social security—the reduction of poverty—and the more ambitious objective of income maintenance.

      The organization of personal social services in different societies is extremely variable. Ethnicity and urban deprivation have added new dimensions to need that cut across the traditional client categories of families, children, youth, the sick and handicapped, the unemployed, the aged, and the delinquent. Nevertheless, there are continuities and consistencies in the pattern of needs that characterize these major client groups.

Major areas of concern

family welfare
      Social philosophers and caseworkers generally regard family life as the ideal context for the promotion of social welfare. Family welfare programs seek to preserve and strengthen the family unit through both economic assistance, where available, and personal assistance with a variety of services. Personal assistance services include marriage counseling in most developed countries and in urban centres of developing countries; maternal, prenatal, and infant care programs; family planning (planned parenthood) services; family-life education, which promotes both the enrichment of family relationships and the improvement of home economics; “home-help” or “homemaker” services providing household assistance to families burdened with chronic illness, handicaps, or other dependencies; and care of the aged through such programs as in-home meal services, transportation, regular visitation, and reduced-cost medicines.

      A paramount concern in all family welfare programs is the welfare of children. Whenever possible, children's services are rendered within the setting of home life. Income assistance to parents may help ensure the basic security of the family structure. Maternal, prenatal, and child health-care programs are important in all societies but especially so in those affected by widespread disease and malnutrition; infant and maternal mortality rates are in fact the most basic indexes of child welfare. The increasing number of working mothers worldwide has given rise to day-care (day-care centre) services ranging from simple custodial supervision to educational and health-care programs. In some countries, industries are required to provide such facilities for their employees, in recognition of the changing economic pressures on family life.

      While the family unit is imbued with great value by most child-welfare programs, these programs must also address the special needs of unwed mothers and their children, broken families, and children whose families, although intact, are sources of abuse and neglect rather than love and nurture. Attitudes vary greatly among the world's societies toward pregnancy out of wedlock. Historically, social and even physical persecution have been common in some communities, but most modern societies recognize a responsibility toward the welfare of unmarried mothers and their children. In industrial countries, and in some developing countries through private charity, services typically include medical care and delivery and counseling regarding the decision to keep the baby or to give it up for adoption. In many countries institutional homes provide for the care both of unwed expectant mothers and of mothers and babies after delivery, in a setting sheltered from the often rigid strictures of family and community. Procedures of adoption vary considerably worldwide, but arrangements are frequently carried out by social service agencies in cooperation with legal authorities.

      Whereas orphans once made up the majority of children living in institutional homes, the number of children who lose both parents through death has been greatly reduced by medical advances. Institutional and foster care are now provided mainly to children whose home lives have been disrupted, permanently or temporarily, by marital discord, financial hardship, parental irresponsibility, neglect, or abuse. While foster care might be considered preferable because it offers the intimate atmosphere of family living, some children, such as those severely affected by parental abuse or emotional disturbance, may adjust more comfortably to the more impersonal environment of an institution. Although it cannot be determined conclusively whether the increasing incidence of reported child abuse is attributable to falling standards of parental care or to improved detection and reporting, much effort has been invested in supervision, social education, and cooperation between personal social services and health care, education, police, and housing authorities.

Youth welfare
      The underlying aim of most social welfare services for young people, apart from those services that address immediate basic needs, is to prepare them for the assumption of responsible roles in the adult world. The majority of programs provide adult-supervised leisure-time group activities, which may range from cultural and social events to athletics to hiking and camping. Participation in such programs is high in most European countries. The former Soviet youth organizations, called Pioneers and Komsomol, were the largest in the world. Some programs, such as Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts or Girl Guides, Young Men's Christian Associations, and Young Women's Christian Associations, have spread nearly worldwide, stimulating the formation of similar groups tailored to local needs. In addition to group activity, youth welfare programs also provide counseling and guidance services on a more individual basis to help meet the personal, social, educational, and vocational needs of young people.

      While the above services are intended to provide constructive outlets for the energies of young people, there remain many destructive influences in society. Social services have directed increasing attention to the problem of delinquency in an effort to provide alternatives to the traditional juvenile court/institutional methods of control. In some urban areas so-called street workers approach the problem at its source. Recognition of the importance of peer groups in youth behaviour has led to the use of group therapy in many correctional institutions and in communities as a preventive service or as an adjunct to parole.

Welfare of the elderly (old age)
      The elderly now constitute the largest single client group using personal social services worldwide. In all advanced industrial societies the proportion of infirm elderly is on the increase, and, although they constitute only a small minority of the retired population, their claim on social services is disproportionately heavy. Because social care for the elderly is often labour-intensive, most countries give full support to the promotion of family care and the expansion and rationalization of informal care on a voluntary or quasi-voluntary basis. Services include transportation, friendly visiting, home delivery of hot meals, nurse visitation, and reduced-cost medical supplies. Senior centres sponsor group activities such as crafts, entertainment, outings, and meals on a regular basis. Nursing homes, variously funded, provide medical and custodial care for those who are unable to live independently. Paradoxically, the majority of elderly people lead independent lives, seldom utilizing personal social services. Indeed, fit elderly people are increasingly in demand as a source of voluntary service.

Group welfare
      The settlement movement arose in response to the collective needs of deprived urban communities. Settlement houses today, and similar community centres and other organizations, seek to promote the common welfare of local groups that may differ in language, national origin, race, or religion. Whereas, in the United States, attempts were formerly made to Americanize such groups by supplanting foreign traits of language and custom with American ones, the emphasis of educational and training programs has changed; language and other assimilating skills are taught, but the preservation of cultural diversity is also promoted. In addition to educational and cultural programs, settlements may offer legal advocacy, recreational activities, and health clinics.

      Throughout the 20th century the resettlement of massive numbers of refugees forced from their homes has placed great demand on social welfare services. In Europe and North America various church denominations have taken an active role in relief and other welfare work for such groups as well as for migrant and transient elements within the general population.

Welfare of the sick and disabled
      Serious illness and disability account for many of the problems addressed by social services. In addition to the need for adequate primary care, the ill and disabled also frequently face disruption or loss of income, inability to meet family responsibilities, the long-term process of recovery or adjustment to handicaps, and ongoing care in the form of medication, therapy, and the observance of dietary or other precautions.

      In some countries, medical social workers are local-authority social workers who have been attached to hospitals, local general-practice health centres, and child guidance agencies. They provide the counseling and other supportive services required by the physically ill and the disabled and their families. Especially in countries where free medical care is not available to the poor, the responsibility for means-testing gives the workers an additional, advisory role with respect to their clients' financial problems. Personal social services make arrangements for domiciliary care in the form of regular visits from home-helpers and occupational therapists; special appliances and home adaptations are supplied either by personal social services or by health services. In the case of severely disabled people personal social services run day-care centres to provide relief for family care providers and small residential homes for the most dependent disabled when they no longer require hospital care.

Welfare of the mentally ill
      The social aspects and consequences of mental illness (mental disorder) were recognized early in the history of social work. The speciality of psychiatric social work developed initially as an adjunct to hospital care in urban areas. Such services have also been provided under military auspices, particularly in wartime. In developed countries today the psychiatric social worker serves at all levels of patient care; social casework may contribute to diagnosis and the course of treatment; educational and counseling services help other family members cope with the problems of hospitalization, treatment, and aftercare; close work with housing authorities and employers can facilitate the readjustment of patients into community life by means of foster care, halfway houses, sheltered workshops, and regular employment.

      Personal social services have been a major contributor to the development of community care for the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped. In the industrialized world generally, though less so in Russia, policy calls for a reduction in the number of patients hospitalized on a long-term basis; this goal can be achieved only by returning patients to their families or accommodating them in neighbourhood hostels providing adequate support and supervision. The bulk of this responsibility has fallen on local authorities and voluntary agencies, which provide the professional staff and volunteers. Treatment programs are also increasingly designed to prevent hospital admissions and to avoid compulsory admission in all but exceptional cases.

The work of the personal social services

Social work training
      In practice the demand for personal social services does not fall into clearly defined categories. Welfare needs often overlap, and the needs of individuals often affect their families or associates. The range of skills required for effective service provision is equally complex. Inevitably, therefore, opinions differ on the training and deployment of social workers.

      In the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and India the bulk of training is provided in the higher-education system, whereas in France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden it is conducted mainly in separate institutions. Most social workers are employed in either statutory or voluntary agencies; outside the United States very few are engaged in private practice. There is much diversity in their training and deployment, but the role of social workers has broadened, making them individually responsible for a wide range of methods and client groups. In some cases specialized social workers are deployed in teams. Opinions differ on the relative effectiveness of the alternative methods of intervention—direct casework, or counseling, on the one hand and indirect social-care planning on the other. Voluntary and private agencies tend to perform more specialized roles, centred on particular client groups and age groups requiring special methods of care and service delivery.

Administration of services: basic organization
      There are marked national variations in the organization and funding of personal social services. To begin with, there are differences in the relative importance of the statutory, voluntary, and private sectors. Second, even if governments are the major contributors, the proportional allocation of funds for the statutory and nonstatutory sectors varies from country to country. Third, there are variations in the relative importance of central, regional, and local governments with respect to statutory funding, policy-making, and service delivery. Fourth, there are also variations in the degree of administrative autonomy granted to the personal social services.

      The paid staff of statutory personal social services includes social workers, community workers, social care assistants, home-helps (homemakers), workers who supply mobile meals, occupational therapists, and psychologists working in a variety of field, day-care, and residential settings. Although social workers account for a small proportion of the social service workforce, they constitute the majority of its professional staff. Their job is to provide casework, or counseling, services in cooperation with individuals and families and to engage in tasks of social-care planning, such as seeing to the delivery of direct services in kind and fostering the involvement and support of informal care providers and volunteers. In most industrial societies social workers have more or less exclusive responsibility for mandatory duties related to fostering, adoption, and other work affecting parental rights as well as for the management of substitute home care or residential care for the main client groups. Probation officers act as social workers with a special attachment to the courts, the administration of probation usually being separate from that of other statutory personal social services.

      The increasing orientation toward community care calls for social policies that strengthen the association between formal personal social services and informal networks of social care without losing sight of their differences. The formal public, or statutory, sector and the voluntary and private sectors all have paid career staffs whose objectives and management are bound by explicit rules. The primary tasks of the public sector are laid down by statute; most voluntary and private organizations are registered, respectively, as charities and companies. In countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, and Japan formal voluntary and private agencies receive direct or indirect grants from the statutory sector in return for agreed amounts of contracted work. In the developing countries many welfare agencies are internationally organized and jointly financed by charitable donations and government grants.

      Informal care is spontaneously provided in the context of families, neighbourhoods, and other loosely structured community-based associations. Without these supporting networks the personal social services would be overwhelmed by demand. Consequently they often make small grants to informal self-help groups and supplement the unpaid services provided to dependents by their relatives and friends. Professional social workers and community workers are increasingly deployed in the recruitment, training, and general assistance of informal care providers. Payment for fostering is a long-established practice in many countries, and this policy has spread to the care of other groups such as the handicapped and the infirm elderly.

      Personal social services are prime movers in the humanitarian trend toward caring for dependent people in their own communities, to which the high cost of residential care adds an economic incentive. It is evident that there is no clear boundary between the formal and informal sectors of social welfare. Nevertheless, informal care cannot take the place of formal services, the two sectors being mutually supportive rather than alternative sources of social welfare. Formal social services are a matter of legal obligation; their providers and users are normally strangers to each other, whereas informal care is given and received on the basis of personal relationships. Formal services have a wide membership and are delivered on a continuous basis, without regard to personal considerations. Informal care is highly localized and—although it may reflect intense loyalty and devotion—is often less reliable than formal care in the long run because family and neighbourhood networks are vulnerable to personal crisis and social change. Such care also does not usually extend to those without living relatives or other close associates. There are, of course, changes in priority within formal social services in response to trends such as the increasing incidence of reported child abuse, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, the growing proportions of unemployed and infirm elderly, and the heightened awareness of racial inequality and injustice.

Administration of services in the United States
      In the United States the main social assistance and personal social service programs are county- and state-administered, with substantial federal government support. Many programs are delegated to local governments, and voluntary organizations are heavily subsidized by public bodies via contracts for provision of services. The Department of Health and Human Services is the chief federal agency, and each state has a counterpart of this agency. In addition there is a small but popular and growing private market for fee-charging social services that overlaps the voluntary sector.

      Federal policies for the personal social services have changed significantly since the 1960s. The Social Security amendments of 1962 put a premium on the role of rehabilitative casework, although states could also include homemaking and foster care. Between 1967 and 1977, however, income maintenance services (Aid to Families with Dependent Children excepted) were regrouped under the Social Security Administration, and primary responsibility for personal social services was transferred to the Office of Human Development. The 1974 amendments to the Social Security Act (Title XX) considerably extended the scope of eligibility for social services, giving priority to preventive work and positive efforts to improve the quality of life rather than to the traditional focus on poverty abatement. Casework, or counseling, however, lost ground to community-oriented service programs such as day-care provision, mental health centres, and nutrition programs. Problems of child abuse and alcohol and drug dependence have steadily assumed greater importance.

      There has been significant growth in employer-sponsored welfare programs in the private sector and service-purchase schemes linking public, voluntary, and private agencies, accompanied by increasing use of paid volunteers. The promotion of for-profit entrepreneurial services and decentralization of funding and policy management from federal to state agencies is intended to diversify still further the mixed economy of welfare that typifies the personal social services of the United States.

      In both the United States and Canada special treatment programs have been developed for the prevention and treatment of child abuse, but lower priority has been given to preschool and family support programs designed to encourage better parenting and child development. The U.S. Child Abuse Coordinating Program set up in 1972 is based on an interservice approach involving municipal and quasi-public bodies, one of which provides the agency officers. American child protection law is extremely complex because of its dual federal and state components, and, although the best interests of children are generally paramount, it is thought difficult to consider them in isolation from those of the parents.

      The mental health care legislation of 1970 and 1972 stepped up the funding of community mental health centres in poor areas, but it was not until the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 that priority federal funding began to reach those with the worst economic or ethnic disadvantages among the chronically ill, the retarded, and the elderly. There is a growing problem of homelessness among the more mobile patients discharged from mental hospitals, who need higher incomes and more social support if they are to resume independent lives.

      Social services for elderly American citizens constitute a typical mixed economy of welfare. Amendments to the Older Americans Act of 1965 have led to the establishment of a network of more than 600 Area Agencies on Aging, which are area-wide planning and coordinating agencies. Locally sponsored senior citizen centres provide group meals and counseling, homemaker, information, referral, transportation, educational, legal, and recreational services. There are also a strong volunteer sector and a rapidly expanding private market. Provisions for the frail elderly under Medicaid and Medicare do not include long-term social care, and the poorest groups are dependent on social insurance and social assistance for the requisite finance. Many not-for-profit and for-profit agencies have developed nursing-home and other special housing schemes that are linked to various reverse-equity mortgage options. Nearly three-quarters of all the states have tax policies designed to reduce the cost of independent living for elderly homeowners with low incomes.

Administration of services in the United Kingdom and Australia
      In the United Kingdom, as a result of the Seebohm reforms of 1970–71, the funding and organization of personal social services are highly centralized at the local authority level. In each local authority a single social services department serves all categories of client and welfare need. In Scotland, however, the probation service is separate. Personal social services are provided from catchment area offices, although some local authorities delegate this responsibility to small “patch” teams serving neighbourhoods. Roughly half of local authority funding comes from the central government; nevertheless, within strict cash limits, the local authorities exercise wide discretionary powers over the organization and deployment of personal social services. Social work training is centrally regulated, and there is only one (general) qualification in professional social work.

      Although income maintenance was transferred to the central government in 1948, local-authority social workers continue to provide small cash grants to families with children when shortage of money is deemed likely to cause a family breakdown. In Britain the separation of income maintenance and social work services was part of an overall policy designed to end the historically stigmatizing association between public assistance and social work in particular and the more general association between poor relief and social welfare. It was also hoped that social work and the other personal social services would shed their low status and become more acceptable in all sectors of society. This philosophy was adopted by the Seebohm Report of 1968 and reflected in the Local Government and Social Services Act (1970), but the resources for a truly universal network of services oriented toward preventing problems were not forthcoming.

      British child care law developed in piecemeal fashion over a long period. Nevertheless, it places a clear obligation on the local authorities to protect children at risk and to receive them into care when their welfare is at stake because their parents are deemed unable to provide satisfactory care. Under certain circumstances local authorities can assume full parental rights until a child reaches the age of 18. Separate provisions are made for compulsory admission into care through juvenile court proceedings, when children are “in need of care and control” on various defined grounds, or through matrimonial, divorce, separation, wardship, or criminal proceedings. Care orders may also be issued under the Children and Young Persons Act of 1969, as amended by the Criminal Justice Act of 1982, when children or young persons are found guilty of an offense that, if committed by an adult, would be punishable by imprisonment. Observation and assessment centres and secure community homes with educational facilities on the premises are run by the Department of Health and Social Security.

      There are strict regulations on boarding out children in care with foster parents, including thorough investigation of prospective homes, frequent inspections, and the keeping of case records. In English law, adoption is an almost complete and irrevocable transfer of a child from one family to another. Adoption orders are made in the Magistrates', County, or High courts, and adoption proceedings can be initiated only by registered, not-for-profit adoption agencies (including local authorities).

      Although English law makes extensive provision for the protection of children, personal social services have a well-established tradition of working with children and families on the basis of a cooperative partnership whenever possible. This tradition includes avoidance of recourse to legal intervention or residential care unless it is in the best interests of the children concerned.

      With regard to the mentally ill and mentally handicapped, the British Mental Health Act of 1959 anticipated the trend toward voluntary treatment and voluntary hospital admission, and legislation in 1982 introduced even stricter criteria for the protection of patients' rights. Since 1983 certain procedures in the admission and discharge of mentally ill patients have belonged to a new category of specially trained social workers. In cases of compulsory detention, patients have a strengthened right of appeal to the Mental Health Review Tribunals, and there are special provisions for the guardianship of certain types of discharged patients. There are still serious deficiencies in community care for the mentally ill or handicapped as well as the elderly and the physically handicapped, but various joint government and local-authority funding schemes have helped to reduce the numbers in institutional care.

      Services for the elderly and the physically handicapped account for roughly half of all British local-authority personal social service expenditure, mainly because of the steady increase in the numbers of the frail elderly and the high cost of care for the minority who live in residential homes. Extensive efforts have been made to improve the quality of domiciliary support, but relatives carry the main burden of home care. There are special housing schemes for the elderly sponsored by statutory, voluntary, and private agencies, and a growing number of local authorities employ paid volunteers to visit elderly people and help them with a range of daily tasks. Perhaps the best guarantee of independence in old age, however, is an adequate income from social security.

      The formal voluntary sector makes its own important contribution to the care of all the major need groups, although it is heavily dependent on direct and indirect financial support from both central and local governments. Within the voluntary sector the churches have always played a major part in the provision of both community and residential care. Nevertheless as statutory funding has lagged well behind demand, the private market, especially with respect to services for the elderly, has begun to expand.

      In Australia the state governments and the local authorities, with some federal funding, have the main responsibility for personal social services. Each state has a welfare department, usually an amalgamation of the former children's and public relief departments, providing a general range of casework and community services. Some of the municipal authorities also provide welfare services in conjunction with their public health, educational, housing, and legal aid services. In addition there is a well-established tradition of volunteer work that is subsidized by statutory bodies, sometimes provided on a dollar-for-dollar matching basis. Some of the religiously based charities, such as the Brotherhood of Lawrence, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Salvation Army, are pioneers in work with severely deprived groups.

Administration of services in other developed countries
      In France personal social services are not administratively autonomous. A variety of social workers and social care workers are employed by other major public services, such as social security, hospitals, community health care, education, housing, and the courts. There are several types of social worker, including the family social worker (assistante sociale) and other specialists in child protection, medical social work, and court work; the homemaker (travailleuse familiale); child development workers specializing in the care of handicapped children; social allowance guardians with special responsibilities for families in serious financial difficulties; and the community worker (animateur socioculturel), who serves neighbourhood groups. Apart from the statutory services there is an extensive network of semipublic agencies (caisses) based on trade unions, family associations, and religious denominations, as well as a variety of independent, not-for-profit organizations financed by state grants.

      The French system of child care is explicitly family-oriented. It is based on services financed by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with other family income support services. The judicial services are called upon only if parents refuse to cooperate. Social workers are employed in maternal and child health centres and in municipal and family allowance agencies. Special child-protection officers work closely with pediatric nurses in cases of actual or suspected child abuse, and the procedures for removing children from the home and for providing substitute care are in principle similar to those in Britain. Child care services are unified at département level, and there is close liaison between the courts and specialized medical services in child protection work.

      The reforms of the 1960s and '70s improved the quality of French social services not only for children but also for the mentally and physically handicapped and the elderly. Since the late 1950s domiciliary care and sheltered housing provisions have been strengthened and diversified, objectives that were upheld in the Laroque Report of 1960 and in the provisions of the Sixth (1971–75) and Seventh (1976–80) Plans. The plans specifically referred to the growing need for more trained staff and for more sheltered housing, residential homes, and nursing homes in addition to increased community care and more generous income support within a better-coordinated framework of health and welfare programs at neighbourhood, local, and regional levels. Social care services for the mentally ill are mainly controlled by the health and employment authorities, but the social workers attached to the regional and local caisses play a major part in the provision and coordination of community care.

      In the Federal Republic of Germany there is a long tradition of cooperation between the statutory and voluntary sectors and between these formal agencies and the informal networks of family and neighbourhood care. These arrangements exemplify the principle of subsidiarity (the belief that informal care should, whenever possible, take precedence over state intervention) in European Roman Catholic welfare philosophy, although in Germany all the major religious denominations play an important part in social welfare service. The health care provisions of the income maintenance services do not extend to the longer term welfare needs of the elderly mentally ill or handicapped or those of the physically disabled. These are met largely from public aid. About half of the total expenditure on welfare services comes from the Aid for Care program, which channels much of its funding through the larger not-for-profit charitable organizations.

      The modern Swedish welfare state emerged from poor-law and charitable traditions in which the churches were prominent. Since the years between the two world wars, the scope and funding of statutory agencies have steadily increased. Local authorities, assisted by central government grants, provide most personal social services and a social assistance scheme, in which investigation of needs and means is undertaken by social workers. There has been a trend toward the unification of specialist agencies into local joint welfare boards, but the municipal communes still exercise considerable local discretion in the organization of their services. Although the extensive role of the state in Swedish welfare has elicited much comment, the scale of voluntary effort is equally noteworthy, as it is in Norway and Denmark.

      Israel has a complex system of welfare services distributed by central ministries, with subdivisions for all the major need groups, including services for wounded soldiers and surviving dependents, a Jewish agency with special responsibilities for immigrants, and a universal labour union (Histadruth) with extensive roles in insurance and welfare and a long tradition of mutual aid based on local collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperative villages (moshavim). This has been supplemented by a network of community centres funded by the central and local governments and by membership fees and overseas donations.

      Japanese social welfare provision is uniquely reliant on employer- and work-based social services, although there is also an extensive but relatively underfunded system of statutory local-authority personal social services for the major need groups. Social workers in these municipal agencies are responsible for both discretionary income support and protective social care. In major cities they cooperate with a growing number of voluntary agencies, of which the Minsei-iin is the oldest and largest. As in the case of income support, health care, and housing, access to welfare services for most Japanese workers largely depends on the size and financial stature of the organizations employing them. Although traditional familial ties are still pervasive, they are weaker in the large cities, as a result of social and geographic mobility. At the same time, the number and proportion of the dependent elderly show a marked increase. Accordingly, Japanese policy has turned toward the expansion of statutory services, and much has been done to foster neighbourhood networks of mutual aid that go beyond the traditional notions of kinship and obligation.

Administration of services in socialist and developing countries
Socialist countries
      It is as difficult to make generalizations about social welfare in socialist countries as it is in the case of the democratic societies referred to above. Nevertheless, in the foremost socialist societies the state provides the formal social services, and the workplace and the trade unions play a large part in service management and delivery. In these planned economies, where work is both a civic right and a formal obligation, social assistance for the unemployed is minimal. In the absence of firm data on this area of provision it must be presumed that families shoulder the main financial responsibility for many of the exceptional needs covered by discretionary provision in the West.

      There are no professional social workers in China, nor were there any in the former Soviet Union; (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) but social service workers perform similar functions, especially with regard to child protection and delinquency. The erstwhile Soviet Union had a long tradition of nurtured interdependence between the formal social services and a complex network of mutual aid, lay counseling, and supportive services. The latter were distributed by street, block, and house committees in the towns and cities, by agricultural collectives in the countryside, and by the parallel agencies of the trade unions and the Communist Party.

      The Chinese system of social welfare is also strongly based on the industrial or agricultural workplace. Many essential social services, such as health care, are funded from the profits of collective work and administered by neighbourhood committees. Throughout the People's Republic the guiding welfare principles are self-reliance and mutual aid. Although in exceptional cases families receive grants-in-aid to help with care for dependent relatives, Article 13 of the 1950 Marriage Law states that children and parents are jointly responsible for mutual support in hardship and old age. At the same time, extensive and sustained support is given to schemes of mutual support that extend to neighbourhoods and workplaces, and priority is given to the needs of dependent persons without families of their own.

      The trend in the Balkan states has been toward the decentralization of personal social services and the promotion of neighbourhood voluntary work. State-sponsored organizations such as the Alliance of Friends of the Young and the Pensioners' Associations act in conjunction with a growing network of professionally staffed social work centres financed by the 600 communities that are the basic units of local government. Developments similar to these can be seen in the other countries of eastern Europe where, as in China, there is a strong commitment to the expansion of informal provision for family dependents and neighbours.

      In former colonies, such as Ghana, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, India, the Philippines, and Francophone Africa, the basic welfare services grew out of modified versions of the European poor laws, charitable and missionary activities, and the introduction of Western juvenile justice procedures. The oldest school of social work in Latin America was founded in Santiago, Chile, in 1925, and the Ratan Tata Foundation established the first Indian school in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1936. New training institutions have since proliferated throughout the so-called Third World, many of them sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development.

      In developing countries, where formal social services are generally under-resourced, traditional networks of informal care are the main source of assistance in adversity and old age. High rates of migration and unplanned urban growth, however, have weakened these networks in impoverished rural areas and overwhelmed the limited public services in new cities and towns. Indigenous overcrowding and poor housing, unemployment and low wages, and inadequate sanitation and endemic disease are not responsive to Western methods of personal social service intervention. Priority, often within severe economic restraints, must go to major programs of preventive health care, family planning, basic education, income support, and slum clearance. Nevertheless, community development work is also important in these processes of social development. In the poorest rural areas, where the majority of people live at or well below subsistence level, disaster relief is heavily supplemented by international aid agencies such as the United Nations and its associated agencies, including the World Health Organization and the International Labour Organisation (ILO), charities such as Oxfam and the Save the Children Fund, and the governments of richer nations. In the longer term the enhancement of living standards depends on horticultural improvements, reforestation, water conservation, and those irrigation schemes that can be managed within small communities.

Conclusion
      It is clear that the processes of economic and social change create new prospects and new hazards for every generation. This requires constant adjustment on the part of the social services. Political considerations and levels of resources largely determine how social services are organized and how responsibility is apportioned between the statutory, voluntary, and private sectors. Even in prosperous societies the scale and diversity of needs is such that the formal social services are obliged to utilize and support informal systems of social care and mutual aid. The idea of the welfare state as a universal provider for largely passive populations has never had any reality in fact nor much serious support in political theory. There is widespread evidence of a general trend toward the development of closer links between the formal and informal systems of social care, although this might lead to further variation in social welfare services as societies become more sensitive to their indigenous cultural diversity and develop their own responses to change.

Robert A. Pinker Ed.

Additional Reading
Key texts from the extensive British literature include the Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services (1968), known as the Seebohm Report; Eric Sainsbury, The Personal Social Services (1977); Social Service Teams: The Practitioner's View (1978); and Eileen Younghusband, Social Work in Britain, 1950–1975: A Follow-Up Study, 2 vol. (1978). The historical development of these services is analyzed in Joan Cooper, The Creation of the British Personal Social Services, 1962–1974 (1983); and Social Workers: Their Role & Tasks (1982), known as the Barclay Report, which brings together different views of the role of the personal social services. The Future of Voluntary Organisations (1978), known as the Wolfenden Report, gives a clear account of voluntarism in Britain; and Hugh W. Mellor, The Role of Voluntary Organisations (1985), provides more recent analysis. Martin Bulmer (ed.), Neighbours: The Work of Philip Abrams (1986), studies the role of informal care and reviews the debate on the relationship between the formal and the informal sectors. See also Rudolf Klein and Michael O'Higgins (eds.), The Future of Welfare (1985).There are a number of useful comparative studies, including Barbara N. Rodgers, Abraham Doron, and Michael Jones, The Study of Social Policy: A Comparative Approach (1979), on the United Kingdom, France, Israel, and Australia; Alfred J. Kahn and Sheila B. Kamerman, Social Services in International Perspective: The Emergence of the Sixth System (1976, reissued 1980), which covers Canada, the United Kingdom, France, West Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Israel, and the United States; Sheila B. Kamerman and Alfred J. Kahn (eds.), Family Policy: Government and Families in Fourteen Countries (1978); Joan Higgins, States of Welfare: A Comparative Analysis of Social Policy (1981); Neil Gilbert, Capitalism and the Welfare State (1983, reprinted 1985); J.A. Yoder (ed.), Support Networks in a Caring Community: Research and Policy, Fact and Fiction (1985); and Else Øyen (ed.), Comparing Welfare States and Their Futures (1986). See also Catherine Jones, Patterns of Social Policy: An Introduction to Comparative Analysis (1985).Comparative studies on socialist policies include Vic George and Nick Manning, Socialism, Social Welfare, and the Soviet Union (1980); John Dixon, The Chinese Welfare System, 1949–1979 (1981); and Bob Deacon, Social Policy and Socialism: The Struggle for Socialist Relations of Welfare (1983).Key issues on personal social services in developing countries are discussed in James Midgley, Professional Imperialism: Social Work in the Third World (1981); and Margaret Hardiman and James Midgley, The Social Dimensions of Development: Social Policy and Planning in the Third World (1982). Discussions of personal social services can also be found in studies of social security, such as Harold L. Wilensky et al., Comparative Social Policy: Theories, Methods, Findings (1985); Peter A. Köhler and Hans F. Zacher (eds.), The Evolution of Social Insurance 1881–1981 (1982); M.A. Jones, The Australian Welfare State: Growth, Crisis and Change, new ed. (1983); Brian Easton, Social Policy and the Welfare State in New Zealand (1980); and James Midgley, Social Security, Inequality, and the Third World (1984).Robert A. Pinker Ed.

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Universalium. 2010.

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