The great reforming Labour Government of 1945 set out to address the ‘five giants’ – the five great social problems – that had been a blight on British society in the interwar years: unemployment, illhealth, poor education, bad housing and poverty. It tackled these problems head-on by setting up the post-war welfare state. The result was a dramatic improvement in the lives of ordinary people: better education, better standard of living, better housing and health care, secure employment and, as a result, improved life expectancy, healthier lives and more time and money to spend on consumer goods. The result, to quote Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, was that we had ‘never had it so good’!

The social work profession was always a central part of the developing welfare state. After the Kilbrandon and Seebohm Reports social work and social service departments became integral parts of the welfare system – with social workers as key state employees, hired to help people navigate their way through the system, and help and support them as they decided to bring about change to their lives.

The vision of 1945 – of an integrated welfare system, geared to meet the needs of ‘the many, not the few’ – has, however, been under concerted attack over the best part of forty years. Ideas of ‘marketisation’, consumerism, privatisation and individualism have been used to erode the commitment to a welfare system that can be accessed as a right of citizenship.

This timely book looks at the impact of this process on social work. Each of the authors is a well-known, leading social work academic. Each has turned their attention to what has happened to social work (broadly understood to include the service, the profession and the people who use services). Each tells a tale of huge potential, of the strengths that social work brings to help and support people at times of difficulty and change. But each also traces how this potential has been made more difficult to fulfil and the task more challenging by a combination of government interference, privatisation of the welfare state and austerity. The book could be depressing: a litany of government failure and its impact on people's lives.