Abstract
THERE IS, LIVINGSTONE OBSERVES, a eertain vagueness about the meaning to be given to welfare, partieularly in relation to developing eountries'. 1 In Kenya this 'vagueness' has manifested itself in the range of serviees whieh 'soeial welfare' has, at various times, been seen to inelude: 'eommunity development', 'aid', 'soeial work' and 'soeial serviees'. As first used by the eolonial government the term had a speeifie meaning: the provision of serviees to deal with partieular 'soeial problems' in urban eentres sueh as juvenile erime, vagrants, orphans and the eare of the handieapped. 'Soeial welfare' is apparently similarly defined under the present Kenyan government: 'to rehabilitate maladjusted and soeially disorganized individuals and to reduee and prevent soeial problems'.2 But governmental poliey statements reveal little about the aetual praetiee of 'social welfare' in Kenya today and in the past.This artiele examines the background to social welfare services in urban Kenya, the environment in whieh formal serviees were first implemented, and the effeet of independenee and inereasing international intervention upon the nature of 'soeial welfare'. Case material is drawn irom the town of Eldoret, the Headquarters of Uasin Gishu Distriet in Rift Valley Provinee. Once a White settler stronghold, it is now, as available statisties eonfirm, the fastest growing town in Kenya.3 Eldoret continues to have a multi-raeial and multitribal population; its settler past, and present relative prosperity, situated as it is in the President's home area, lend the town to study of this sort.
Published Version
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