There has been continuing debate ever since the reorganisation of social services following the Seebohm Report as to the most appropriate mode of organising field social work. At different times various models have been proposed with more or less enthusiasm, some of which expect fieldwork caseloads to be of a generic kind and others which demand a greater degree of specialisation. This paper examines the extent of specialisation in social work based on a national survey of fieldwork organisation and considers some reasons why this trend to specialisation is evident, even in authorities with a strong commitment to community-based modes of provision.

It is commonly argued that democratic-welfare capitalist societies face a continual tension between market individualist and need-oriented welfare values. If this is so, the attempt by the British Conservative Government of the 1980s to administer a brisk restorative to the welfare state with a purging dose of market principles seems likely to generate a tenacious opposition. This paper uses the transfer of sick pay responsibilities to employers through the 1983 Statutory Sick Pay scheme as a case study, to examine with what success market-based ideologies have encroached on people's conceptions of welfare citizenship.

In several West European countries the way in which social security is currently financed by payroll contributions is widely criticised for its negative effects on employment and on the future stability of social security revenue. The calculation of the contributions on a broader assessment base, that is, value-added, might be a plausible alternative. Since human labour is increasingly replaced by technology, could the latter's value-added be used for financing social insurance? This article reviews the major empirical studies on the economic effects of such a rebasing to a so-called ‘Maschinenbeitrag’. It shows that the economic and budgetary benefits are very uncertain; therefore a shift towards a fiscalisation of social security financing is suggested as an alternative line of policy.

During the second half of the 1970s, the practice of the closed shop became widespread in some parts of the British public sector, but was resisted in others. This paper examines the issue in relation to the National Health Service, where trade unionists made frequent demands for the closed shop and where many managers were apparently not unwilling to concede it. Yet very few closed shops actually resulted. The paper examines the origin and patterns of these demands, health authority policies towards them, and their outcomes in terms both of the operation of the closed shops which were agreed, and the reasons for failure to agree. The conclusion is that although NHS industrial relations had apparently matured very rapidly between 1973 and 1977, the trade unions were neither strong enough nor united enough to enforce the closed shop; nor were industrial relations so far developed as to make the practice a natural next step.