The Voluntary Sector

Abstract

The focus of debate and policy development on the relative roles of the state and the market in the provision of welfare services has meant that the size and the scope of the voluntary organisation of welfare has often not been fully appreciated and that the role and importance of the voluntary sector has not been clearly analysed or understood. These are significant omissions, for the voluntary sector in Britain, and in other welfare capitalist countries, is vast in size and generally is effective in its role in reaching the needs that the state and the market sectors cannot meet. In their influential report on the future of voluntary organisations in 1977, the Wolfenden Committee estimated that voluntary activity in Britain was equivalent to the work of 400 000 full-time workers; and, in his study of voluntary sector activity in three English towns, Hatch (1980) discovered 294 organisations operating in one West Midlands metropolitan borough. This is a major slice of organised welfare activity taking place outside both the state and the market.