Social Services Policies UK

Basically after 1948, three departments were responsible for personal social services:

• First one was health departments, responsible for public health and various aspects of social care;
• 2^nd one was welfare departments, responsible for residential care and help to elderly and disabled people;
• 3^rd one was Children's departments, responsible for child care.

While in the 1960s they were unified into Social Work Departments in Scotland, and Social Services Departments in England and Wales. This gave the momentum to social work as a generic profession, though genericism is increasingly rare in practice.

Though much of the spending on social services went on residential care, the SSDs, and professional social work, were dominated by child care. But government tried to shift balance by the introduction of community care policies in the 1990s, following the Griffiths report of 1988. Recent improvements in central government have divided out responsibilities further. Basically Community care is within the Department of Health; children's services within the new Department for Children, Schools and Families, and criminal justice is within the Ministry of Justice.

The most important department is child care department, Children’s Departments in 1948 were founded in part in response to a child care scandal. It was mentioned in the 1948 Children Act, it became the duty of a local authority to 'receive the child into care' in cases of abuse or neglect.

The foundation on which a care order can be made are defined in England and Wales in the Children Act 1989. The main purpose for admission to care has to be the welfare of the child, taking into account his or her needs, wishes and family background. In order to be admitted to care, a child should be suffering or at risk of 'significant harm', which is defined as 'ill-treatment or the impairment of health or development', or should be beyond parental control.

They key purpose for the formation of Social Services Departments is the intention to co-ordinate their activities as far as possible with health services. In the report of Griffiths on Community Care, published in 1988, proposed a different kind of arrangement. It was mentioned in the report that rather than depending on co-ordination and integration of services, there should be one service with clearly defined responsibility, which would commission services from others.

Even though the government announced that Griffiths would be implemented, the reform of community care stopped short of this. Basically Care management in practice is unlikely to be devolved close to the practitioner level; there are not multiple purchasers, but one main purchaser - the Social Services Department; and there is much more emphasis on co-ordination than on choice and the market. The basic systems which have been put in place seem at first blush to have more in common with the planning of the 70s than with market ideology, and in practice emphasis on co-ordinated activity with other services has increased rather than diminished. Existing indications are that the services have become disorganised and demoralised.