Welfare Issues and Policy Challenges at the End of the Millennium

Abstract

The five papers delivered at the conference are included in this report. Peter Saunders reviews some of the principle arguments advanced by critics of welfare state performance and examines the demographic challenge facing it, its affordability and the crisis of legitimacy in welfare before considering the reforms that are being introduced. Jim Ife goes further afield and looks at the tension between globalisation and localisation and the ways in which they are meeting human need, with a view to seeing whether the two can be integrated. Jenny Chalmers looks more closely at one aspect of the state in providing welfare, that of aged care. In particular, she examines the user pays paradigm and its role in provision of care for the elderly. Tony Eardley reports on workers who earn low pay and the policy responses to working poverty. Ian Carter's paper is concerned with the non-profit organisations who are taking on an increasingly important role in our society as government contracts out more and more services.