Families, Welfare And Social Policy

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Families, welfare and social policy

Earlier this year, the editorial team of Family Matters commissioned a set of papers for a special issue of the magazine devoted to the question of social policy and its impact on family life in Australia. Every author that we approached agreed to write something for us, and this issue is the result.
Overview of themes

In inviting people to write for us, we were particularly keen to generate papers looking at the changing system of state welfare and how it relates to family life. Reform of the welfare and social security systems is at the forefront of political debate in many western nations, including Australia, and in September this year the Minister for Family and Community Services, Jocelyn Newman, announced that welfare reform was to be a key priority in the Federal government's legislative program. In putting together this special issue of Family Matters, we hope to contribute to the debate which will inevitably follow from the government's determination to reform the Australian welfare state.
Any reform of the welfare state obviously has important implications for Australian families. This is because, in some significant ways, the modern welfare state and the family can be seen as functional substitutes for each other. Obviously the state cannot supply the affection that we look for in family life, any more than the family can supply the range of services and level of support that the state can provide. But in general, the more the welfare system does, the less the family is likely to be required to do, and vice versa. This is why welfare policy and family policy are so closely linked - change in one will normally imply change in the other.
Given that so many of the problems being confronted in Australian public policy are also being addressed in other developed countries, it made sense for us when putting this issue together to solicit contributions both from within and from outsid...