Social welfare in New Ingerland

Template:Sidebar social welfare Social welfare in New Ingerland is a system of payments provided by the various levels of government to individuals and families through the provision of benefit payments and services. Welfare is mostly funded chiefly through general taxation and charitable donations. Since the decentralisation of the welfare system in the 1970s, social welfare has been provided on the basis of need.

History

Background and origins (1838-1910)

The first system of social welfare in New Ingerland came in 1838, two years after first settlement, with the passage of the Poor Relief Act. The New Ingerland Poor Relief Act was essentially a continuation of the English poor law from Elizabethan times that had been subsequently amended in 1834 owing to it's unsuitability in an industrial society. However, in the more rural New Ingerland, the Elizabethan poor law was considered ideal for dealing with the small number of paupers - chief of whom would be widows and orphans - that were likely to appear in the fledgling nation. Indeed, so successful was the Poor Relief Act, that it remained the primary means of dealing with the poor for almost 80 years. Whilst almshouses, workhouses, and the like were established in this time, the vast majority of poor relief was in the form of 'outdoor relief' or assistance in the form of money, food, clothing, or goods.

Other forms of social welfare came in to being during this time. The Ministry of Education was established in 1880.

First reforms (1910-1946)

By the early 1900s, New Ingerland had finally began to industrialise on a large scale, and large cities began to appear for the first time. Just as in Ingerland, the New Ingerland poor law was no longer able to best meet the needs and demands placed upon it by an increasing number of paupers. In response, the Liberal administration of Henry Chaytor enacted the Welfare Reform Act in 1910. The new Act was based partly on the Liberal reforms in New Zealand, and partly on the Majority Report of the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws and Relief of Distress in Britain. It abolished the few workhouses that had been sporadically built in the intervening 80 years, and established new forms of specialised institution to cater for orphaned children, the unemployed, and the mentally ill. The elderly over the age of 55 would not be required to enter any of these new institutions, and would instead receive a pension - the first of it's kind in New Ingerland.

In the 1920s, further reforms were warranted.

Labour reforms (1946-1975)

The second welfare system endured until 1946, when the new Labour government of Peter Sims passed the Social Security Act as one of it's first pieces of legislation.

Concession cards

The following concession cards are issued by the County departments of social welfare: