The administrative geography of the major welfare services

This chapter focuses on health and personal social services, education, housing, and transport – those parts of the welfare system which receive most attention in this book. Responsibilities of local authorities for these aspects of welfare provision are very wide-ranging, and it is not proposed to discuss all of them in detail here. Certain aspects of welfare provision are selected for particular attention because of their significance to the client groups discussed later in the book, and because of their geographical dimensions which are of interest here. For a detailed compendium of the provision of these services, the reader is directed to the text by Bryne and Padfield (1985 ). In this chapter the historical development of responsibilities for welfare provision are considered, to show how trends in national and local policies influence the geography of public welfare provision. The British case provides an interesting example of how public welfare services evolve in response to social and political changes in society.