Throughout history, the 'welfare of the people' has been a contested area. Is it the responsibility of the state? The churches? The extended family? Organised charities or informal community groups? The Fabric of Welfare is about the many points of contact between voluntary welfare and government social services, and the complex pattern woven by these different threads.

The country's welfare history is shaped by its colonial past, with the predominantly British influences transmitted by an immigrant society in the nineteenth century; by its Maori population, with a strong communal ethos; by the shaping forces of the welfare state; by two world wars and economic depression; and by both free-market policies and rapid social change in recent years. In tracing the interdependence of state and voluntary provision of welfare from 1840 to 2005, Margaret Tennant offers new perspectives on New Zealand social history.

This is a rigorous analysis, but it is also a history illuminated by people. The text is illustrated with stories about the people who were moved to save, to reform, to care, to support, and the people who needed that essential sustenance. From the nun who sees a distraught woman about to throw her child into the sea, and sets out to care for 'foundlings', to city missioners, community-minded public servants, businessmen philanthropists, and the entrepreneurial organisers of floral fetes and telethons, these accounts tell us much about the history of welfare, in all its interconnections.

Contents                                                       

Part 1: The Nineteenth Century
1.1 The British Inheritance
1.2 State Activity
1.3 The Emergence of Voluntary Welfare
1.4 Organised Charity and Early Philanthropy
1.5 Religion and the Churches
1.6 Adult Rescue and Residence
1.7 Prisoners' Aid and the Male Role in Rescue
1.8 Threads and Patters

Part 2: War and Depression
2.1 The Expanding Role of the State
2.2 Social Work, Case Work and the Personal Social Services
2.3 Wartime Negotiations
2.4 Health
2.5 Disability
2.6 Orphanages and Child Welfare
2.7 Depression and Unemployment
2.8 Interactions

Part 3: Partnership or Entanglement? The Welfare State and Voluntary Organisations, 1940s – 1980s
3.1 The Consolidation of the Welfare State
3.2 Families and Counselling'
3.3 Care of the Aged
3.4 Disability Services
3.5 Maori Social Services
3.6 Sisterhood and Social Service
3.7 Confronting Complexity
3.8 Interdependence
3.9 Promulgating Partnership

Part 4 The Contract Crunch – the Late 1980s and Beyond
4.1 Traversing the New Terrain
4.2 Threads Broken, Threads Rewoven

Conclusion
Notes
Index