This book will, I hope, do exactly what it says on the cover. It will provide a short introduction to the subject of Social Policy (with a capital ‘S’ and a capital ‘P’). In the process, it will also touch upon some aspects of the social policy or policies (with a small ‘s’ and a small ‘p’) by which a variety of governmental and other organizations throughout the world attend to, promote, neglect or undermine our wellbeing. But its purpose is to serve as an introduction, not as a comprehensive textbook. It will identify key issues, but it cannot and will not explore them in any great detail. It will explain past, present and future trends in general terms, but it will contain few of the kinds of facts and figures that tend to go rapidly out of date. It will identify some of the most important or helpful literature sources, both classic and contemporary, but it will not contain exhaustive bibliographic references. I aim, as simply as I can, to convey my own passion for Social Policy as a field of study.

Passion is a strong word: a bit ‘over the top’ you might think. Let me therefore explain how I discovered Social Policy. When I left university with a generic degree in ‘Social Science’, I went to work at an independent advice centre in Brixton in inner south London. Brixton is known, on the one hand, for its cosmopolitan multi-ethnic community and, on the other, for the extent of the poverty that exists there in the midst of big city affluence. Sadly, it is also remembered for the riots that happened in the summer of 1981. I worked there for twelve exciting and eventful years (including the period in which the riots took place). In that time I became an expert on all sorts of things to do with social security, housing, education, health and social care. I became fascinated by the ways in which it is, or ought to be, possible to make systematic provision to meet diverse human needs. In the course of the battles with authority that I fought with and for people in Brixton I also became increasingly angry: angry, because systems that were supposed to help people often failed or, worse still, hindered or controlled them. I retreated to academia to try and find out why that was; to make sense of what I had been doing. I discovered that the things I had been learning about and the many questions I was asking were all central elements of a subject called Social Policy.

The attraction of Social Policy, for me, is that it is a subject with few, if any, boundaries. It is relevant to every facet of our lives. It is genuinely multi-disciplinary. It reaches beyond the febrile controversies of everyday politics to grasp critically at underlying issues and injustices. It is outward looking, encompassing both the global and the local; the universal and the personal. In the ten short chapters that follow I start in chapter 1 by explaining the scope and importance of Social Policy; in chapters 2 and 3, I discuss its foundations and contemporary significance; in chapters 4, 5 and 6 I explore the principal issues it addresses and their economic, political and sociological dimensions; in chapters 8 and 9 I address some of the fundamental challenges it faces; and, finally, in chapter 10 I consider its future in light of most recent developments.

The book has been written as an invitation to potential students of Social Policy and for students who are new to the subject. It may also, however, be of interest to colleagues and to academics from both inside and outside the subject, because there is a sense in which I am attempting here to refresh our understanding of how Social Policy may be approached. I present the subject positively as the study of human wellbeing. I do so not because this is the only approach that may be taken, but because I am persuaded that it is the most attractive way of introducing the subject to new or potential students.

Social Policy has, until relatively recently, been a peculiarly British academic subject and, insofar as I am an English academic working in an English university, several of the illustrations on which I draw will relate to English or UK social policies. Given the breadth of the subject and the brevity of the book I have made these examples very general and kept their number to a minimum. Social Policy is about real life and, in the classroom, one way to bring it alive is through real-life case studies and the sharing of everyday experiences. But in view of the complexity and diversity of real lives and the wide audience at which this short introduction is aimed, I have been mindful of the risk that even the most carefully chosen illustrative materials may appear parochial or puzzling to some readers. This, therefore, is where the reader's own imagination must come into play. To get the best out of this book, you are invited to apply the ideas, concepts and arguments that I shall outline to your own life and experiences; to your own concerns and beliefs. For those of you who take up that invitation, you will discover that this is a vital element in the study of Social Policy.

By resisting the trappings of a conventional text-book I wanted to provide a continuous discursive explanation of Social Policy: something to be read as a whole (or even in one go). Though I do include a relatively extensive range of bibliographic references at the end of the book, I would not expect anybody to read everything that is listed there: I seek rather to demonstrate the breadth of the literature on which Social Policy can draw. I do not prescribe particular readings but invite readers to explore the subject of Social Policy – using this as a jumping off point – in whichever direction they wish to go.

This is meant to be a book for anybody who might be interested in Social Policy, whatever they are doing and wherever in the world they find themselves. A book of this length can only scratch the surface, but I hope it will reveal something of the vibrancy, diversity and humanity that lies beneath.

Hartley Dean,

London School of Economics and Political Science