Territorial indicators of need, describing variations in the characteristics of areas ranging from wards to standard regions of the United Kingdom, represent a mainstream application of social indicators in this country. The development of these indicators has, for the most part, been based on an intellectual tradition which has paid little attention to theoretical argument.

In Part I of this article, a typology of existing need indicators is developed. By analysis of some of the best-known and most sophisticated examples, it is illustrated how this lack of theory has severely limited their usefulness in policy practice, particularly with regard to resource allocation, where they are potentially very important. A predominant symptom of the problem encountered with empirically based need indicators is the difficulty of establishing criteria for testing their validity.

For the ‘meaning’ of a need indicator to be clear, the indicator must be theoretically based. More specifically, it should be rooted in theoretical conclusions about the policy of welfare interventions. In Part II of the article, the theory of the need judgement as a cost-benefit decision is used to provide a basis for a need indicator. This method is then explicated with regard to social services provision for the elderly, so as to provide an indicator which is in fact a standard level of expenditure for social services departments in England and Wales.

This article explores why some of the arrangements for the employment of disabled people are so resistant to change despite their evident shortcomings. From historical data it is argued that the negotiations which shaped the Disabled Persons Employment Act 1944 were motivated by sectional concerns which were detrimental to the interests of disabled people but that the legislation subsequently became symbolic of deeply felt and widely shared values. The implications of this for current policy options are discussed. An attempt is made to show how an analysis of the relationships between motives, actions and values in the policy-formation process can help to explain why some policies are both more ineffective and more persistent than others.

The objective of this article is to explore aspects of the nature and process of exchange in welfare systems. The welfare exchange was the focus of much discussion in the early 1970s stemming from the writings of Titmuss, Pinker and Pruger, and this article starts with a review of that debate. In searching for a more adequate theoretical framework it argues that Gouldner's work on reciprocity, beneficence and complementarity provides that framework. A model of exchange on an interpersonal level is put forward in which welfare exchanges are viewed as lying along a continuum reflecting the notions of reciprocity and beneficence, with exchanges at each end of the continuum being represented by the two types of complementarity. Dependency, power and disequilibrium are seen as crucial factors in the exchange process, and the total pattern of exchanges is shown to be strongly influenced by the pattern of resource generation and availability within which all exchanges occur. Different types of social services are located at various points along the exchange continuum, and these are seen as reflecting differing relationships between service donors and individual service recipients. The final section of the article is concerned with discussing the influence of the interaction between ‘servers’ employed by agencies and service recipients.

The dimension of time has been relatively neglected in studies of means-tested benefits. This article explores some of the issues which arise when time is considered explicitly. It is based on housing department records for 205 rent allowance claimants in Bristol which were monitored over a twenty-seven- to thirty-two-month period between November 1974 and June 1977. All the claimants had initially applied for rent allowances in response to a one-off promotion undertaken by the local authority and so they do not constitute a representative sample. Nevertheless mathematical controls indicate that the findings are fairly robust. Only a third of the claimants studied were continuously in receipt of rent allowances during the monitoring period and most claimants who dropped out of the scheme did so as a consequence of changes in their circumstances rather than because they failed to reapply. For most claimants, therefore, the rent allowance scheme provided temporary assistance rather than continuing financial support. The implications of the marked fluctuations in the financial circumstances of the observed claimants are discussed in relation to the administration of means-tested schemes.