What Are the Origins of the Welfare State and What Did It Set Out to Achieve

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QESTION 1: ? After the Second World War, Britain experienced some significant changes that had great impact on the society. The war brought problems like food shortage, unemployment, health issues and a massive problem of utilisation of resources of the society. Following the years after the war (1939-45) Britain needed to rebuild and focus on issues arising from the health and housing. This was done under a coalition government. (Fraser, D 2003) The state had to welcome new and reliable policies that would benefit and help the society to end the Five giant evils as referred to by William Beveridge the founder of welfare state who was a liberal but was supported by labour to investigate the social policies of Britain, he wrote a report that included a detailed blue print for the reforms of benefits and a foundation and responsibility of the state to meet welfare needs for all. (Alcock,2008). Beveridges Report (1942) had three principles to enable him carry out his plan. Firstly government would grant family allowance, secondly create good health care service and thirdly maintain employment .these were aimed to tackle 5 major problems of the society. (Alcoock, 2008) The five evils he referred to were Disease, ignorance, idleness, squalor, want. According to Beveridge, National health service would help to tackle health problems, idleness was seen as a problem caused by joblessness so full employment would help to end it, if people were educated it would help to tackle ignorance so Beveridge wanted people to be educated, to increase the way people were living public housing had to be improved to tackle the issue of Squalor, and National insurance was to help people with want for example health services and pensions. This report brought about the reforms that established the welfare state of 1945. (Fraser, 2003) The idea of Beveridges plan was for the welfare state
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