Talks Practice Under Pressure In the Changing Welfare State

In attempting to redress inequalities of a market economy social policy has found itself, more often than not, responding to changing fortunes rather than trying to shape social futures, working out how best to pick up pieces, rather than developing comprehensive preventive mechanisms. Rather than suggesting that there is little commitment to preventative mechanisms, this paper agues that the gap between policy and practice is so large that preventive mechanisms do not find their way into the core of practice. One reason for this is that day to day practice concerns itself so much with crises, and resources are rarely available for preventive mechanisms. Another is that policy makers and practitioners rarely speak the same language.