A characteristic feature of advanced industrial societies in the western world is the considerable growth of social welfare expenditures. This phenomenon is illustrated in Tables I and II which indicate the scale of increase which has taken place in the UK and the USA since the early 1950s....

Efficiency has not been the most familiar concept in the vocabulary of the personal social services in recent years. Some of the more obvious reasons for this having been the post‐Seebohm emphasis on expansion; the lack of clarity about service outputs and objectives; and the relative failure...