What do we mean by ‘community’, ‘care’ and ‘welfare’? In this unit you will explore the meanings of these words in their historical and cultural settings. The unit does not discuss these terms exclusively in terms of social work practice so service users, carers or anyone interested in community care and the ways in which welfare services are provided would find this unit useful. This study unit is just one of many that can be found on LearningSpace, part of OpenLearn, a collection of open educational resources from The Open University. Published in ePub 2.0.1 format, some feature such as audio, video and linked PDF are not supported by all ePub readers.