ABSTRACT
The National Assistance Board did not spring into life fully grown in 1948. The Unemployment Assistance Board came into being in the 1930s when the cover provided by the Unemployment Insurance Scheme with respect to prolonged unemployment was firmly defined and responsibility for those whose insurance benefit was exhausted was transferred from local authority public assistance to a national authority. Stigma has been defined as ‘a stain’ on one’s good name. Sociologists have drawn attention to the processes by which individuals or groups are stigmatised and the effects on the persons involved. Successive governments have hoped to reduce or eliminate stigma in means-tested benefits by changes in the structure and processes of administration. The stigmatising process has been considered in terms of the larger issues of social policy. Social work is concerned with the interactions and this concern gives it its distinctive character.
