Richard American Butler Definition Of Social Welfare

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In the late 19th century, the poverty dominating Britain’s inner cities became apparent and led to fears of the re-emergence of pauperism. The ‘poor laws’ and laissez fair systems in place understood poverty as being of personal fault and blaming the individual, it had become apparent that this was not the case, social welfare was a national issue that required national solutions, further welfare provision including large state provision led to the creation of the welfare state, it was only in the 1940’s that the British welfare state took its ‘classic’ form. The welfare state is defined as ‘Societies in which a substantial part of the production of welfare is paid for and provided by the government’ (Baldock et al. 2011, p22), this shows that …show more content…

Richard Austin Butler (known as RA Butler), took a piece of legislation through to parliament, Butler accepted the green paper proposals which led to the 1944 Education Act. This act can be classed as a key feature of the classic welfare state as it introduced the tripartite system of secondary education and also made all schooling free for pupils, the new system based on the eleven plus exam helped many able working class children get into higher education, providing them with opportunities that had not been available to them earlier on. The act also renamed the board of education to the ministry of education, giving it greater power and an increase in budget, increasing the amount that could be spent on education; moreover it offered community college, thus providing education for both children and adults. By 1947 over 5.5 million children were in maintained schools, by 1967 it increased to 9.1million and the number of teachers had doubled, in spite of all of this the numbers were still very low and the school leaving age wasn’t increased to 16 until 1972. In my view this shows that the new education act was effective as it provided …show more content…

Beveridge set out the basis of the national insurance legislation of the post war labour government, ‘The whole employed population was covered, not just manual workers or those on lower incomes, as in the pre-war national insurance scheme.’ (Clarke & Books 2004, p.221), this shows how the national insurance act 1945 is a key feature as it provided up to 6 months’ pay for the unemployed and sick pay for as long as it took, it was able to establish a ‘safe guard’ for the insured person that covered them in the widest of areas including injury at work (national insurance – industrial injuries act 1946), sickness, unemployment, old age and death in the form of a widows pension. The welfare system was also able to help those without work through the National assistance act which came into place in 1948, this was able to provide benefits for those who were unemployed or fell through the cracks, it was described by ‘The Times’ as ‘the last defence against extreme poverty’; the issue with this act is that it what not given to people as a

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