Social policy: now and then - a response

This article explores the way aspects of our approach to social policy in the UK have changed over the last 40 years – one academic lifetime and also, coincidentally, the lifetime of this journal – and the significance of six particular changes. More social problems have come to be seen as having a supra-national dimension: the scale and ramifications of problems are much better appreciated; the accepted territory of social policy has greatly widened; the state has lost people's confidence; we have come to see organizational and management issues as much more important; and the health of the economy has come to be regarded as a greater priority than the development of systems of social welfare.