ABSTRACT
This chapter helps the reader to assist the understanding of developments in the individual elements –service sectors –of welfare policy. It outlines developments in a specific area of social welfare in either Britain or Malaysia, the significance of the new challenges –unemployment and public expenditure constraints –as well as the continuation of the distinctiveness of national family values, on the perception of social problems and solutions. Methodologically consistent with the Weberian notion of ideal types, welfare regimes are caricatures of approaches to welfare, providing one-or two-sided templates against which actual welfare states can be compared and contrasted. In considering the current situations of Malaysia and Britain the adoption of such approaches need to be considered with some caution with regard to the context of contrasting historical, social and cultural understandings of family, state and gender. A fundamental issue is the future of social welfare in the context of globalisation.
