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This article is from the Conservatism FAQ, by Jim Kalb kalb@aya.yale.edu with numerous contributions by others.

What about people for whom the usual support networks don't work? Shouldn't the government do something for them?

The fundamental question is whether government should have ultimate
responsibility for individual material well-being. Conservatives
believe that it should not; giving it that responsibility means
despotism, since material well-being is a result of a complex of
things that in the end extends to the whole of life, and
responsibility for each individual case requires detailed control of
the whole complex.

Government responsibility for specific cases also means that what
happens to people, and therefore what they do, is the business of no
one in particular. If there's a serious problem, the government will
take care of it. Such an outlook destroys social ties and promotes
antisocial behavior. If an understanding of the role of government
weakens self-reliance and the moral bonds that give rise to
community, and cannot be made to work without an elaborate system of
compulsion, in the long run it will increase suffering and
degradation and so is the wrong understanding.

Conservatives are therefore suspicious of social welfare programs,
and especially demands that the government make sure there's an
answer for every case. Suspicion has rational limits. Some government
social welfare measures (free clinics for mothers and children or
local systems of support for deserving people) may well increase
social welfare even in the long term. However, because of the
obscurity of the issue, the difficulty in a mass democracy of
limiting the expansion of government benefit programs, and the value
of widespread participation in public life, the best resolution is
likely to be keeping central government involvement strictly limited,
and letting individuals, associations and localities support
voluntarily the institutions and programs they think socially
beneficial.