Local Control of Welfare Services

Abstract

Much debate about, and analysis of, the development and implementation of social policy focuses upon the national context in which policy issues arise. Even where this national context is placed within a broader international, or supranational, context, it often appears to be assumed that it is the policies and practices of national government that are the basis of international comparison — or interference. In the earlier chapters of this book we have tended to assume that social policies within Britain have been developed through national political action as part of a single welfare state and yet, in practice, this is far from the case.