This title was first published in 2001. This is a seminal collection. For the first time, leading scholars and practitioners from Taiwan join with counterparts from Britain to offer comparable commentary on key social policy and social service issues affecting their respective countries. The result is as thought-provoking as it is informative. The approach adopted - of encouraging writers to speak for themselves virtually without restriction - could well provide a model in itself for encouraging and easing contributions from previously unpresented countries into the mainstream of comparative cross-national social policy debate. Concluding papers, on the prospects for East-West comparative social policy in general, confirm the significance of this collection by emphasizing its contribution to broader, social and political debates.