Introduction: Conceptualising Social Care in the Context of Welfare State Restructuring

Care is one of the truly original concepts to have emerged from feminist scholarship, and it has served as a central hinge in thinking about how welfare states are or can be gendered. The concept of care traces its roots to a concern with the day-to-day reproductive work of households and the material significance of women&s;s domestic labour. The concept of care has broadened, reflecting both the complex nature of arrangements for caring in practice and the increasingly comparative nature of scholarship. The concept of social care also has an inherent dynamic which makes it suitable for studying change. Its dynamic lies in the idea of boundaries as applicable at both macro- and micro-level. The restructuring of social service provision of all kinds - housing, education and health as well as social care - has been most extensive in Britain. Welfare state scholarship is more assured in its treatment of continuity than of change.