This book offers insights into the development of social welfare policies in Britain. By identifying continuities in welfare policy, practice and thought throughout history, it offers the potential for the development of new thinking, policy making and practice.
It challenges tacitly accepted arguments that favour particular approaches to welfare, such as conditionality and eligibility and provides examples of enduring social assumptions which influence the way we perform social welfare.

1. Concepts, Continuities and Critique

2. A Brief History of British Social Welfare

3. Philosophical Binaries and Normative Judgements

4. Chocolate, Flowers and Social Welfare Reform

5. War: The Paradoxical Crucible of Welfare Reform

6. Gendered Perspectives on Welfare

7. Piacular Austerity: Sacrificing the Poor for the Rich

8. Universal Credit vs. Universal Basic Income: Strange Bedfellows?

9. Containing the Radicals and Regulating the 'Other': A History of the Strange Case of Social Work

10. W(h)ither Welfare After Brexit and COVID-19?

Jonathan Parker is Professor of Society and Social Welfare at Bournemouth University and Honorary Visiting Professor at the University of Stavanger.