Although it may be tempting to lay the foundation of the human services with the publication of the Beveridge Report in 1942, many of the ideologies embodied within these services have their roots in the work of social reformers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I will identify significant historical developments during these periods and approach the above statement by illustrating how different ideologies influence change within the human services. Such ideologies include those of the left and right wing politicians, liberal theorists and Fabian academics. Also, those of special interest groups such as Feminists, Anti-Racists, Gay and Lesbian activists and Environmentalists. I will evaluate the significance of ideology, and show how as a coherent set of ideas, together with the impact of war combined to lend legitimacy to the idea of widespread and formalised state action across a wide range of social and economic activities. Such was the affect of this new state activity that the notion of a welfare consensus, a broad acceptance of the role of the state in many areas of public and private life, developed in the post-war decades. I will conclude with a c

The National Health Services and Community Care Act 1990 created a purchase/provider split within health and social services and the Criminal Justice Act 1991 provided a new and coherent sentencing framework based on the principle of just desert, with only the most serious of offences punishable with imprisonment.

In 1965, the Seebohm Report examined the fragmented state of existing social work services. This report suggested that delivery was done in a generic way. There was a lot of criticism about social work services from the public, the politicians, and the Fabians. The report was finished in 1968 and was necessary because of an overlap of services. It was recognised that a department should function on one task, rather than on five or six at a time. The outcome of the report was that social services came together under one roof and thus created the broad term we now know as 'social work'.

Developments begun in the nineteenth century in the creation of the environmental, as opposed to medically based health services, and of non-denominational state-funded education again remains with us today, essentially unchanged. Both services when created were rooted in a tradition of local government which itself dates back to the Elizabethan Poor Law and is jealously guarded and frequently the source of conflict.

The New Poor Law brought to us a new vocabulary and new ideas, again which inform the course of human services today. The notions of duty and responsibility mirroring the language of rights, that has grown up in social policy, have been revived for the 1990s in the New Deal which stresses that claimants must be prepared to undertake training or community-based work within the environment task force if they are to go on receiving benefits.

The Curtis Committee in 1948 called for a complete break away from the pre-war Poor Law facilities, which saw the home law taking responsibility for children's services and local authorities being responsible for the delivery of these services.

Some common words found in the essay are:
Poor Law, According Johnson, Relations Act, Fabians Rights, Beveridge Report, Justice Act, Seebohm Report, Union Critics, Gay Lesbian, Margaret Thatcher, human services, social services, poor law, left wing, historical developments, economic social cultural, significant historical, beveridge report, parrot 1999, social welfare, post war, significant historical developments, social cultural affairs, special feminists anti-racists, nineteenth twentieth centuries,
Approximate Word count = 2166
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)