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The Human Rights Act 1998 will give people the right to sue social services if they consider they have been treated unfairly. This may lead to strains on an already low budget and on the profession's low morale. Only lawyers can benefit from this Act and it is likely that the service from private providers of care will reduce.

The UK voluntary sector receives almost 40% of its income from the government, which reduces its independence and takes away the basis on which the sector was initially established. The removal of government funding would be hard to begin with but it would force the sector to start on its own two feet and become independent again. However, funding results in many worthy projects being instigate which may otherwise not be started. Social care should be the priority, regardless of where the money comes from.

Scotland is proposing to provide free long-term residential care for the elderly, but this policy would be a backwards step. Society is aging with less young people leaving the system unable to cope and people do have time to prepare for old age.

Issues are presented concerning the possible outcome for healthcare in the United Kingdom from the implementation of a public private partnership to manage the services currently provided by the National Health Service.

Health and welfare services, including services for children, vary widely from area to area in the UK. The number of children in the care of social services has been rising and falling countrywide. It is better that there are fewer children in care, provided that this does not mean that children have been sent back to live with parents who do not treat them well. Care should be a temporary situation, and children should be found homes with families.

The benefits of promoting child and family well-being via state involvement are questioned on the grounds that US research has found such family preservation schemes to be ineffective. Unless such services are made compulsory, then only middle-class parents will take advantage of them, while neglectful and abusive parents will continue to operate in oblivion.

Religion plays an important role in politics in the US, where around 50% of the population attend a synagogue or church every weekend. In the UK only around 10% of people go to church regularly. It has been discovered churchgoing is linked to longevity and lower blood pressure. The mayor of New York has wide reaching powers. Mayor Giuliani's appointee New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton openly admits to believing in God. The new mayor of London will have far fewer powers and is unlikely to make a real difference.

Social work in the UK began as a voluntary and charitable activity undertaken by visiting societies at the end of the 18th century. However, during the 20th century the state assumed many of the functions traditionally undertaken by voluntary organizations. This has led to a system in which all social work is undertaken in the same way everywhere, having a significant impact on the nature of the services provided. There are dangers associated with the government having a monopoly on the provision of welfare services, including the dissemination through training of inappropriate ideas.

The general acceptance within the medical profession that disabled babies have only been born because of a failure within the screening process leds many doctors to refuse treatment on the grounds of misplaced prejudice. Down's syndrome children often find treatment is refused on a cost basis, with doctors rationalizing medical care for those deemed unworthy or not perfect. A fairer system of treatment could be delivered if patients were not judged on quality of live, only their right to care.

There are a number of possible explanations for the rise in the number of children in local authority care in the UK. To a certain extent, this trend could reflect a shift away from the view that families should be kept together at all costs, even where there is a severe lack of parenting skills. There has been a rise in the number of children placed in care voluntarily, indicating that parents sometimes come to see children as an inconvenience and feel that they can hand them over to the local authority whenever they choose.

Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum now acknowledge that the UK welfare state must undergo wide-reaching reform. In most areas of social policy, serious consideration is now being given to proposals that until recently would have been dismissed. There has been a rapid expansion in the number of policy institutes, but the fact that some institutes are associated with people closely linked with policy failures of the past means that new directions in social policy will not necessarily emerge.

The Sure Start programme is aimed at ensuring children arrive at school healthy and with social skills. It is based on the HeadStart scheme pioneered in the US, which has had dubious results. The government should look at measures to stabilize family life if it is serious about tackling childhood deprivation. Children growing up with both their biological parents have a better chance than those from broke homes.

Government has become increasingly influential in all areas of ordinary people's lives during the 20th century. There has been considerable expansion of government at local, national and supra-national level, but very few people have thought it necessary to challenge this trend. It is now time to consider whether welfare services should be provided by the state and whether it would be advantageous to dismantle the state.

A solution to the problems in the Borough of Hackney, London, England, would be to make it an Action Zone. The UK government likes to create Action Zones to tackle problem areas. Hackney has widespread social deprivation combined with political scandals in its local government departments. The government could legislate for the removal of power from the local authority and allow the private and voluntary sectors to move in with their solutions as an experiment in free-market local government.

The prospect of commercial concerns running education action zones horrifies many educationalists, but schools run as profit-making ventures will provide an alternative against which to measure local authority-run schools. The aim of education action zones, which will consist of a minimum of 10 schools in a deprived area, is to raise standards. Children's interests dictate that voluntary bodies and commercial concerns should be given the opportunity to run schools since this will show whether children in deprived boroughs are held back by poverty, or by the shortcomings of local authorities.

UK Minister for Welfare Reform Frank Field has gained widespread respect for his integrity and strong commitment to his beliefs. His appointment brings the real possibility that the government may be serious about implementing significant changes to the welfare state, which is widely acknowledged to have many failings. However, the government has so far failed to make known any firm plans, except encouraging single parents to return to work. Starting with this policy could be regarded as almost guaranteeing the failure of welfare reform.

Child abuse is much more common in non-traditional family environments than in homes where children are living with both their natural parents, and where the natural parents are married, according to work undertaken by a researcher at the UK Family Education Trust. Indeed, children living with their natural parents who are cohabiting, rather than married, are 20 times more likely to be abused than the children of married parents. It seems that the government is unwilling to gather statistics which reflect the link between child abuse and non-traditional households.

The development of evidence-based social work is a way forward for a profession that is held in low esteem by some sections of the public. It is likely that there would be more support for social workers if there was evidence that the vast amounts of money absorbed by the sector is having beneficial outcomes. However much social work is undertaken in areas where there are not obvious measures of success, and perhaps there is a need to reconsider the roots of social work in the nineteenth century, when it was realised that helpers needed training programmes, rather than just kind hearts to deal with the problems presented.

The collapse of the family, the school and the Church as institutions for socializing the young has created a need for childhood to be re-criminalised. The criminal justice system must stop treating children under 10 as moral imbeciles who cannot tell right from wrong and are therefore unaccountable for any criminal act they may commit. The criminal justice system must treat all human beings, irrespective of age, as moral beings. The definition of criminal behaviour should depend not on the age, sex or colour of the offender, but on the act itself.

The UK welfare state is expensive and encourages dependency, idleness and fraud. Charities offer a better alternative. Nineteenth century charities discouraged welfare dependency and did not help the undeserving poor. The government undermined charities by bringing in education in 870, pensions in 1908 and social insurance in 1911. Charities provide cheap services for the government, but they have lost their independence. They should stop taking government money and obtain funds from the public.