ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights some of the transitions, tensions, paradoxes and dichotomies within and between these themes and considers the value of comparing social work developments in different contexts and the need for social work organisations to continue to adapt appropriately. The foundations of social policy and the bases of the means to deliver social welfare services are complicated. The consistency and rationality which bureaucratic organisation in welfare was expected to provide have instead led to inflexibility and insensitivity. Hong Kong’s history indicates a far greater reliance on voluntary organisations in the provision of welfare. Race and ethnicity may have important parts to play in developing welfare frameworks in terms of the inclusion and exclusion of people for social work and other welfare services. The chapter presents witnessing dispersal, localisation and fragmentation, in a framework of rapid transnational communication, mobility, competition and resources transfer.
