Community Perceptions and the Personal Social Services

In: Policy & politics, Band 1, Heft 3, S. 191-211

Abstract

'In the commercial world consumer demand is constantly encouraged through advertising and by granting credit. New "needs" are created, old ones refashioned …. In contrast, those who may require the help of the personal social services, for instance the welfare and children's services, encounter little encouragement to use them, nor is there a ready flow of simple information about their nature and how they can be obtained …. We can and should encourage those who need help to seek it …. One single department concerned with most aspects of "welfare" as the public generally understands the term, is an essential first step in making services more easily accessible.'

This paper is not primarily concerned with asking how far Social Service Departments have tried or succeeded in stimulating demand. Instead it looks at some of the pre-requisites for drawing the general public into a wider and more effective use of the personal social services. To continue the Seebohm Committee's commercial analogy, it offers some basic market research. The Committee itself, like the Younghusband Committee a decade earlier, was 'regrettably, unable to sound consumer reaction to the services in any systematic way'.