In Sweden, public home help services for the elderly began in the 1950s and quickly became an important component in the Swedish universal welfare state. Until then, support in the household and family work was fairly common in middle-class families and paid for on a private basis. In the public debate in the 1950s, certain social needs were increasingly accepted as decisive for state allocation of the services instead of the buyer/seller relationship of the market with its dependency on individual economic purchasing power. Access to social services should become a basic right for all citizens in need of social care and this should be paid for and organised by the state.