Social Policy is an applied subject; it was developed to meet the needs of people who would be working in the public services. Social administration is the area of the field concerned with the practicalities of service organization and delivery. In many parts of the world, it is dealt with as ‘public policy’ or ‘policy analysis’. Social administration is the study of social arrangements and policies aimed at meeting social needs—especially state welfare systems. Academic social administration has typically adopted a practical, problem-solving, reforming approach, frequently criticized as being empiricist, prescriptive, and narrow; theoretically informed approaches to welfare are now more common. However, as the processes of transferring responsibilities for public welfare from the state to the private sector proceed, public-sector directors and managers increasingly replace administrators, and in this context the term social administration sounds somewhat dated. The social administration approach to social policy is well represented by the work of Brian Abel-Smith, whose influential books include A History of the Nursing Profession (1960), The Hospitals, 1800–1948 (1964), The Poor and the Poorest (1965), and Value for Money in the Health Services (1976). This publication titled “Masterpiece of Social Work, Welfare and Administration” is user-friendly.
