France

In France personal social services are not administratively autonomous. A variety of social workers and social care workers are employed by other major public services, such as social security, hospitals, community health care, education, housing, and the courts. There are several types of social worker, including the family social worker (assistante sociale) and other specialists in child protection, medical social work, and court work; the homemaker (travailleuse familiale); child development workers specializing in the care of handicapped children; social allowance guardians with special responsibilities for families in serious financial difficulties; and the community worker (animateur socioculturel), who serves neighbourhood groups. Apart from the statutory services there is an extensive network of semipublic agencies (caisses) based on trade unions, family associations, and religious denominations, as well as a variety of independent, not-for-profit organizations financed by state grants.

The French system of child care is explicitly family-oriented. It is based on services financed by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Justice, in cooperation with other family income support services. The judicial services are called upon only if parents refuse to cooperate. Social workers are employed in maternal and child health centres and in municipal and family allowance agencies. Special child-protection officers work closely with pediatric nurses in cases of actual or suspected child abuse, and the procedures for removing children from the home and for providing substitute care are in principle similar to those in Britain. Child care services are unified at département level, and there is close liaison between the courts and specialized medical services in child protection work.

The reforms of the 1960s and ’70s improved the quality of French social services not only for children but also for the mentally and physically handicapped and the elderly. Since the late 1950s domiciliary care and sheltered housing provisions have been strengthened and diversified, objectives that were upheld in the Laroque Report of 1960 and in the provisions of the Sixth (1971–75) and Seventh (1976–80) Plans. The plans specifically referred to the growing need for more trained staff and for more sheltered housing, residential homes, and nursing homes in addition to increased community care and more generous income support within a better-coordinated framework of health and welfare programs at neighbourhood, local, and regional levels. Social care services for the mentally ill are mainly controlled by the health and employment authorities, but the social workers attached to the regional and local caisses play a major part in the provision and coordination of community care.

Germany

In the Federal Republic of Germany there is a long tradition of cooperation between the statutory and voluntary sectors and between these formal agencies and the informal networks of family and neighbourhood care. These arrangements exemplify the principle of subsidiarity (the belief that informal care should, whenever possible, take precedence over state intervention) in European Roman Catholic welfare philosophy, although in Germany all the major religious denominations play an important part in social welfare service. The health care provisions of the income maintenance services do not extend to the longer term welfare needs of the elderly mentally ill or handicapped or those of the physically disabled. These are met largely from public aid. About half of the total expenditure on welfare services comes from the Aid for Care program, which channels much of its funding through the larger not-for-profit charitable organizations.

Sweden

The modern Swedish welfare state emerged from poor-law and charitable traditions in which the churches were prominent. Since the years between the two world wars, the scope and funding of statutory agencies have steadily increased. Local authorities, assisted by central government grants, provide most personal social services and a social assistance scheme, in which investigation of needs and means is undertaken by social workers. There has been a trend toward the unification of specialist agencies into local joint welfare boards, but the municipal communes still exercise considerable local discretion in the organization of their services. Although the extensive role of the state in Swedish welfare has elicited much comment, the scale of voluntary effort is equally noteworthy, as it is in Norway and Denmark.

Israel

Israel has a complex system of welfare services distributed by central ministries, with subdivisions for all the major need groups, including services for wounded soldiers and surviving dependents, a Jewish agency with special responsibilities for immigrants, and a universal labour union (Histadruth) with extensive roles in insurance and welfare and a long tradition of mutual aid based on local collectives (kibbutzim) and cooperative villages (moshavim). This has been supplemented by a network of community centres funded by the central and local governments and by membership fees and overseas donations.

Japan

Japanese social welfare provision is uniquely reliant on employer- and work-based social services, although there is also an extensive but relatively underfunded system of statutory local-authority personal social services for the major need groups. Social workers in these municipal agencies are responsible for both discretionary income support and protective social care. In major cities they cooperate with a growing number of voluntary agencies, of which the Minsei-iin is the oldest and largest. As in the case of income support, health care, and housing, access to welfare services for most Japanese workers largely depends on the size and financial stature of the organizations employing them. Although traditional familial ties are still pervasive, they are weaker in the large cities, as a result of social and geographic mobility. At the same time, the number and proportion of the dependent elderly show a marked increase. Accordingly, Japanese policy has turned toward the expansion of statutory services, and much has been done to foster neighbourhood networks of mutual aid that go beyond the traditional notions of kinship and obligation.