ABSTRACT
The establishment of what became known in the 1950s as the ‘welfare state’ in Britain was part of an aspiration by government to deliver a comprehensive range of health and welfare services to meet the needs of citizens. The Labour government at the time argued that the abolition of the Poor Law was an essential first step to creating an organisational and legal framework for social care and welfare which would ensure the promotion of fair and just responses to citizens in difficulty. The role of social work in the new welfare order was to make personalised responses to the crises and difficulties facing those individuals and families who lacked sufficient personal and social resources. The welfare state as it had been conceived in the 1940s was blamed for creating a dependency amongst those using it, which was economically and morally undermining for the individuals involved, as well as for society in general.
