When Richard Titmuss was appointed to the first Chair of Social Administration to be created in the UK at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1950 he took his responsibility as a pioneer for the new subject seriously. As the earlier sections of this book have demonstrated, Titmuss’s work both before and after his appointment provided examples of much of what could, and should, be the focus of social policy analysis and action; and, as a result of this, his name is always the first to be associated with the subject in this country, and throughout much of the rest of the world. Titmuss’s work therefore provides a guide to the subject of social policy through leading by example and, as we have discussed earlier, many have followed the leads which he provided for us. However, Titmuss was also concerned to address more directly the nature of the subject which, through his appointment, he had been formally placed in a position to shape; and the extracts included in this final section provide the most important examples of this definitional work.

The Chair to which Titmuss was appointed was described as ‘social administration’ and, as we shall discuss shortly, the professional association which he later co-sponsored was also initially called the Social Administration Association. This has now become the Social Policy Association (SPA), however, and more generally today the subject is referred to as ‘social policy’ rather than ‘social administration’. The change of name has an important symbolic status (most changes of name do). For some, it signified a shift away from an administrative focus upon the organisation and delivery of welfare and wellbeing within the context of post-war state welfare to a broader policy focus upon the theoretical and political contexts within which welfare was debated and developed: from a concern with ‘what’ and ‘how’ to a concern with ‘why’ and ‘whether’. The issue was taken up briefly in a debate in the Journal of Social Policy between Glennerster (1988), who argued against any abandoning of a concern for the administration and delivery of services, and Smith (1988), who argued for the embracement of political and theoretical debates (see also the commentary by Donnison, 1994).