The article is a form of reflection on the 200th anniversary of Warsaw Charity Society and the 25th anniversary of social welfare act. The author presents some comments on the present condition of the welfare assistance system, assessed from the point of view of the path dependence concept, understood as its resistance to change. Two undertakings of the last two decades, interrelated, are of special interest as they were expected to bring about far-reaching changes in the social welfare system. The first was the reform process of social services, called an active integration. It was the reaction to the accession of Poland to the European Union. The second one was the implementation of a social contract as a new welfare assistance instrument. None of them has been successful: the reform “has got stuck and died” in the process of legislation, social contract has been adapted in the way, which allowed to introduce it into the social workers’ everyday practice without infringing its long lasting patterns. Both cases prove that the welfare assistance system is doing well in the sense that it is still change resistant — a complex set of factors and mechanism, which protects its status quo, has turned out to be stronger than initiatives taken to change it.