Conclusions — Towards Social Welfare Work

Abstract

We wish to begin by making a comment on the form of the book as we see it. Much of it rests on an uneasy tension between an analysis of state change, an analysis of practice and some prescriptions for future practice. In this sense it is to be distinguished from other books which provide an analysis either of the material policy context of welfare work or the forms of practice that exist. It is this separation that we have tried to overcome. A prescriptive work about practice often fails to root itself in the day-to-day material problems of the real situation. Equally an analytical work tries to provide an understanding which does not necessarily point to a clear form of activity. Our bridging of these two traditions is not an easy one; it does not represent a bridge of six lane highways from which practice flows to analysis and back again in a constant stream of traffic. We would contend that it is not just marxists who have problems in constructing this relationship; it is something that most bourgeois writers do not even attempt.