Rations, Residences, Resources is the first comprehensive history of welfare at State level in Australia. It deals with the history of welfare provision and policy in South Australia. It shows that the government has been the dominant provider of welfare services since the beginning of white settlement in 1836. Children, deserted wives, aged people and many other categories of the destitute have been helped.
There is a chapter on non-government welfare agencies, and another on the origins of the profession of social work (by Elaine Martin). A chapter exploring the lives of the poor in the 1880s highlights the book's concern for real-life examples, which are scattered through the text, drawn from the files of various agencies.
Rod Oxenberry has joined with Brian Dickey in writing about the history of policy in the last twenty years. There are interstate and international comparisons, and discussions of the major theoretical issues in welfare policy.
Actual cover shown.