ABSTRACT
The view of the institutional conceptions of social welfare is that social welfare is as necessary to modern industrial society as are roads or a public water supply. Social and economic 'institutions' such as the national insurance scheme or National Health Service, designed to provide social security or care in times of sickness, are essential. The British Government will continue to accept responsibility for certain major 'welfare' services, the word in this context including social insurance, a national health service, public housing, education and employment services, as well as the personal social services to which the definition of welfare is sometimes confined. Murray described this creativity well when he made the sweeping but encouraging generalisation that in all voluntary organisations there is a distinct movement from concentration on the pathology of society to its positive health, as for example where Marriage Guidance Councils moved from counselling to educational work in schools.
