An interesting discussion of how our attitudes to social policy have changed is in the journal Social Policy and Administration, written by Paul Wilding, a now retired guru of left-wingish thinking. He says six changes are important:

More social problems have come to be seen as having a supra-national dimension: the scale and ramifications of problems are much better appreciated; the accepted territory of social policy has greatly widened; the state has lost people’s confidence; we have come to see organizational and management issues as much more important; and the health of the economy has come to be regarded as a greater priority than the development of systems of social welfare.

Do that’s why we all face targets and concern about delivery, and also why we seem to think everything is far too complicated to achieve anything. But the history shows that if we keep pegging away at something, we can make inroads over time; that’s why it’s worth working in health and social care, instead of making money in banking.

Paul Wilding