STATUTES
| Date | 01 September 1970 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1970.tb01296.x |
| Published date | 01 September 1970 |
STATUTES
LOCAL AuTHORm SOCIAL
sEBVICE8
ACT
1970
TEE social services provided by local authorities have been
developed almost entirely at random during the past eighty years,
in response to the perceived needs of the moment, rather than
in
accordance with preconceived theories of social welfare and
administration. In
so
far as these services were governed by any
guiding
administrative principle,
it
was the principle laid down by
Edwardian poor law reformers like Morant and the Webbs, that
social services should be divided according
to
a strict classification
of their functions, rather than according to the social and economic
status of their clients.’ This was a useful principle with which to
attack the prevailing distinction between
‘‘
pauper
)’
and
‘‘
non-
pauper
”
services; but
it
was rather a crude instrument for dis-
covering and relieving different kinds of social need.
It
led
to a
situation in which the problems of a single family might be exam-
ined and treated by
a
dozen
or
more statutory and voluntary social
work agencies; and
it
ignored the fact that, although problems of
education, housing, health, old age and child care may be logically
separable, they are in a large number of cases practically inter-
dependent.
Lack of coordination among the different local authority social
service departments, and the need for a more synoptic,
‘‘
family-
centred
”
service have been discussed by several investigating
bodies during the past decade Z-the latest and most exhaustive
of these being Sir Frederick Seebohm’s Committee
on
Local
Authority and Allied Personal Services which reported in July
1968.
The Seebohm Committee outlined a plan for the drastic
revision of local social services, in both organisation and general
frame of reference.
It
proposed that the functions
of
local
children’s departments should be linked with the
“
social
”
func-
tions of housing, education, health and welfare departments, and
with the welfare services available under the National Assistance
Act, to form one single consolidated
cc
social service depart-
ment.”
s
These departments should ultimately be staffed,
no
longer by specialists familiar with only one branch
of
social work,
but by generically-trained social workers able to understand and
treat all aspects of a family ~ituation.~ Heading this new kind of
1
Royal Commission on the
POOT
Laws, Minority
Report.
Cd.
4499, 1909,
pp.
a
Report
of
the Committee on Children and
Young
Persons,
Cmnd.
1191, 1960.
The
1219-1’231.
Ministry
of
Reconstruction,
POOT
Law
Refom,
1919,
p.
23.
Report on Children and
Young
Persons (Scotland),
Cmnd.
2306,
1964.
Child.
the
Familu and tht?
Youna Offender.
Cmnd.
274%
1968.
I
II
3
Cmnd.
3703,
pa;&.
168.
4
Ibid.,
paras.
516-522, 531-58.
530
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