The concept of social need is inherent in the idea of social service.
The history of the social services is the story of the recognition of
needs and the organization of society to meet them. The Seebohm
Report (1) was deeply concerned with the concept of need, though
it never succeeded in defining it. It saw that ‘The Personal Social
Services are large scale experiments in ways of helping those in
need’.
Despite this interest it is often not clear in a particular situation
what is meant by social need. When a statement is made to the
effect that a person or group of persons are in need of a given
service, what is the quality that differentiates them – what definition
of social need is being used?
The concept of social need is of particular interest to economists.
They have a clearcut measure of ‘effective demand’: demand
is ‘effective’ when people are prepared to back it by pecuniary
allocation and ineffective or non-existent when they are not.
This measure will not do for the social services, because there
is normally no link between service and payment (though some
economists think there ought to be). If the social services are trying
to cope with need without limiting it by the ability to pay, how is
it actually assessed? In practice, four separate definitions are used by administrators
and research workers.
1. Normative Need
Normative need is that which the expert or professional,
administrator or social scientist defines as need in any given
situation. A ‘desirable’ standard is laid down and is compared with
the standard that actually exists – if an individual or group falls short
of the desirable standard then they are identified as being in need.
Thus the BMA’s nutritional standard is used as a normative measure
of the adequacy of a diet (2). The Incapacity Scale developed by
Townsend (3) and the measure of social isolation used by Tunstall
(4) are also examples of normative standards used as a basis of
need. A normative definition of need is in no sense absolute. It may
not correspond with need established by other definitions. It may
be tainted with a charge of paternalism-i.e. the use of middle-class
norms to assess need in a working-class context – though where the
aspirations are to middle-class standards this may be reasonable. A
further difficulty with the normative definition of need is that there
may well be different and possibly conflicting standards laid down
by different experts. The decision about what is desirable is not
made in a vacuum. As Walton (5) has pointed out, the statement ‘X
is in need’ is often taken as an empirical fact. This is not so. It is a
value-judgement entailing the following propositions: X is in a state
Y, Y is incompatible with the values held in society Z. Therefore Y
state should be changed. So the normative definition of need may
normative need is that which the expert or professional, administrator or social scientist defines as need in any given situation. a desirable standard is laid down and is compared with the standard that actually exists if an individual or group falls short of the desirable standard then they are identified as being in need. thus the BMA nutritional standard is usedas a normative measure of the adequacy of a diet. the incapacity scale developed by townsend and the measure of social isolation used by tunstall are also examples of normative standards used as a basis of need. a normative definition of need is in no sense absolute. it may not correspond with need established by other definition. a further difficulty with the normative definition of need is that there may well be different and possible conflicting standard laid down by difficulty expert . so the normative definition of need may be different according to the value orientation of the expert on his judgements about the amount of resources the should be devoted to meeting the need or whether or not the available skills can solve the problem. normative standards change in time both as a result of developments in knowlege and the changing values of society.
felt need is equate with want. when assessing need for a service the population is asked whether they feel they need it. in a democracy it could be imagined that felt need would be an important component of any definition of need but a felt need measure seems to only be used regularly in studies of the elderly and in community development . felt need is by itself an inadequate measure of real need. it is limited by the perceptions of the individual whether he they know there is a service available as well as a reluctance in many situations to confess a loss of independence .on the other hand it is thought to be inflated by those who ask for help without really needing it.