Writing this book has been both a personal and an academic journey. The Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 created new powerful local authority social services committees to plan, develop and deliver what we now call ‘social care’ for children and adults. In 1972 I was elected as a young councillor in Sunderland and served on the newly created committee. At the time it was assumed what was termed ‘the personal social services’ would follow the path to ‘welfare state’ status that had already been taken for health, education, housing and social security. There was much to commend this short-lived era though it was not without its faults and critics.

Today even the term ‘social services’ has vanished and the policy landscape has changed beyond recognition. Local authorities no longer make long-term plans, neither do they deliver services and support – that is largely the province of private companies. In the process there has been a complex shift in the way that we think about those requiring support to live their lives – a mix of client, consumer and citizen. Whereas fifty years ago I was a member of a working group developing a ten-yearear plan for local authority service expansion, today I am hunting around ‘the market’ trying to find a suitable and affordable care home for a family member. Politics, policy and the personal eventually intersect for all of us.

The book is not a diatribe about one approach or another, neither does it identify any simple solution; rather it seeks to untangle a complex story, to identify shifts and strands, continuities and discontinuities, problems and options. Putting it together has been hugely helped by so many excellent staff at Policy Press; from the first pitching of the idea right through to the final proofs, the team has worked like a well-oiled machine. My thanks to you all. Thanks also to those organisations and authors who have kindly given me permission to directly quote their work, and to the many scholars and practitioners whose work I have admired, utilised and referenced. And finally, a massive thank you my wonderful wife Val who has encouraged me to write this book.