ABSTRACT
According to R.M. Titmuss (1968, p. 21) what lies at the centre of our focus of vision in the study of social ad ministration is the objectives of services, transactions and transfers, in relation to social needs. We are con cerned, for example, with such questions as 'What is the point in having a National Health Service?*, 'Why ought we to provide industrial retraining centres?', 'Why ought we to offer "sheltered" accommodation to former mental hospital patients returning to the community?', and so on. As Titmuss puts it:
It is the objectives of these services, transactions and transfers in relation to social needs, rather than the particular administrative method or institutional device eirqployed to attain objectives, which largely determine our interests in research and study, and the categorisation of these activities as social services. (1968, p. 21) Even if Titmuss is thought to exaggerate the place of
the study of the welfare objectives of social policies in the study of social administration, if such objectives are studied at all, students of social administration and students of philosophy have at least some interests in common. Plato's 'Republic', for example, a text widely used in the teaching of philosophy, in Books 3 and 7 in cludes a detailed account of an education service and its objectives discussed in relation to the social needs of members of various social classes.
