This article reports on an attempt to discover the attitudes of members of the public towards a range of personal and family problems, all of which could be seen as relevant to the work of social service departments. The data are drawn from two samples: one of current users of a social services department and the other from the general public.

Our outline findings show that although users seem more aware of the potential of social service departments than other members of the community, there is nevertheless substantial confusion and disagreement over appropriate services for different problem situations. It was equally clear that for several quite important problems many people saw voluntary or neighbourhood involvement as more relevant than intervention by a statutory agency. On the basis of these findings we discuss the following suggestions for social service departments. Firstly, education programmes are necessary to improve general knowledge about the personal social services, but structured in such a way as to avoid stimulating demand which cannot be met – we are critical of the Seebohm report's analogy of personal social services with commerce. Secondly, more attention needs to be paid to relationships between social workers and other professionals who may be intermediaries in contacts between the potential client and the agency. Thirdly, social service departments should assess their own priorities with greater sensitivity towards the community viewpoint, since we found not only a significant willingness for people to get involved in social service but a keenness to participate in policy making.

This paper considers the explicit intentions and possible implications of the new phase of urban renewal policy now being developed in Britain under the Housing Act 1974. The details of the Act are seen in the context of the evolution of this type of social policy since the last war. The aims of this policy are to preserve certain ‘housing functions’ that are considered to be necessary components of the urban housing system, at the same time as relieving ‘housing stress’ and achieving the physical improvement of existing dwellings. A case study of an inner city improvement area in a provincial conurbation is used to suggest that it will be difficult to achieve all these aims at one time due to the inherent limitations of policies based on small areas. These limitations are seen as the consequence of a continuing effort to patch up the obvious shortcomings of existing policies without wishing to face the political and economic problems of a comprehensive housing policy.

Recent discussions of a ‘welfare rights’ approach in social work have suggested that the European Convention on Human Rights might provide a useful framework, a list of service objectives against which present provision might be assessed. In the present paper the author argues that the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to be preferred, because of its inclusion of social and economic rights. However, there are philosophical and political objections to such a wide-ranging list of human rights. The author attempts to answer these objections in order to release the Universal Declaration as a viable framework for a welfare rights approach.

The study deals with the history of an early Israeli labour movement attempt at establishing economic equality. In the early 1920s, under unique conditions, which made the Histadrut (Israeli general union) the largest employer of its members, a ‘family wage’ was established after its workers spontaneously began to practise communal distribution of their basic necessities. Though applied only to a minority of Histadrut members, it was extremely prominent in ideological and educational activities of organized labour, because the minority included the leadership, officers and managerial strata.

From the outset the system was beset by controversy over application, and, more significantly, over what actually constituted equality: an equal standard of living for families or equal pay for equal work. One problem never solved was how to convince skilled workers, especially profesisonals, to accept the same wage as unskilled workers. The system was therefore eroded from the beginning by exceptions made for specific groups. As more and more groups pulled out and regulations became harder to enforce, the family wage became isolated to the point where it was repealed in 1954.