Contexts of Social Work: Social Policies and Social Trends in Contemporary Europe

Abstract

This chapter will begin with a general background to the development of welfare states in Europe, and a look at the principles and philosophies of welfare which they enshrine. The ways in which they have converged, both in terms of social trends and in terms of social protection, will be discussed and set against some key differences between the British approach and those of other member states. In the main we shall be referring to the industrialised northern states, but we shall note the separate problems of the more agricultural southern states. Social trends (of poverty, migration and racism, and of family stress and change) will be considered in order to give a portrait of the population with which social work is concerned. The intention of this chapter, then, is to give a picture of the ideological and social context of social work in some European member states (especially France and what was ‘West’ Germany).