ABSTRACT
The transformation of the welfare state in Western Europe has led to an increasing role for citizen-led initiatives, for businesses and for philanthropy in easing, solving or preventing social problems. Help and social change are moving into the hands of strangers people driven by enthusiasm and commitment but unfamiliar with the pitfalls of social intervention. The study of social intervention went on to develop further as a discipline in Britain and the United States, as well as countries like Germany and Sweden. A monopolist governmental system has come to be known as communism or socialism. This construction generates bureaucracy and limitations to individual freedom. Professionalization and the integration of social work in welfare state policies resulted in academic journals like the British Journal of Social Work and Social Service Review. The field of social intervention is diverse, wide-ranging, and almost impossible to delimit with precision, especially from an international perspective.
