Böcker utgivna av Bristol University Press

Challenging current thinking, this important book is the first to focus on the role of area-based initiatives to tackle the link between education, disadvantage and place. Aimed at all those actively seeking to tackle disadvantage, including policymakers, practitioners, academics and students.

"Beyond the workfare state" explores equality, discrimination and human rights in relation to employability and 'welfare-to-work' policies bringing together a wide and distinctive range of illustrative studies that gives voice to a variety of potentially marginalised groups.

This much-needed new textbook introduces readers to the development of China's welfare polices since its conception of an open-door policy in 1978. Setting out basic concepts and issues, including key terms and the process of policy making, it overcomes a major barrier to understanding Chinese social policy. The book explores in detail the five key policy areas of employment, social security, health, education and housing. Each is examined using a human well-being framework comprising both qualitative and quantitative data and eight dimensions: physical and psychological well-being, social integration, fulfilment of caring duties, human learning and development, self-determination, equal value and just polity. This enables the authors to provide not only factual information on policies but also an in-depth understanding of the impact of welfare changes on the quality of life of Chinese people over the past three decades. A major strength of the book lies in its use of primary Chinese language sources, including relevant White Papers, central and local government policy documents, academic research studies and newspapers for each policy area. There are very few books in English on social policy in China, and this book will be welcomed both by academics and students of China and East Asian studies and comparative social policy and by those who want to know more about China's social development.

This book argues that the traditional government approach of exhorting individuals to live healthier lifestyles is not enough - action to promote public health needs to take place not just through public agencies, but also by engaging community assets and resources in their broadest sense.

This book provides the first critically informed discussion of work and workers in the UK welfare sector under New Labour. It examines the changing nature of work and explores the context of industrial relations across the welfare industry.

This is the first book to explore the public policy process through 19 contributions from diverse scholars from all over the world, using empirical material to demonstrate how many of the key theories and concepts may be applied to its analysis.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book is about the experiences of students in institutions of higher education from 'non-traditional' backgrounds with contributions from the UK, the USA and Australia which reveal that the issues surrounding the inclusion of 'non-traditional' students are broadly similar in different countries.

This important annual volume examines the economic and political challenges that have confronted governments over the past year, and highlights the diverse ways in which nations have responded, providing academics and students with an invaluable up-to-date analysis of the current state of social policy.

NHS reform continues to be a topical yet contentious issue in the UK. Reforming healthcare: What's the evidence? is the first major critical overview of the research published on healthcare reform in England from 1990 onwards by a team of leading UK health policy academics. It explores work considering the Conservative internal market of the 1990s and New Labour's healthcare reorganizations, including its attempts at performance management and the reintroduction of market-based reform from 2004 to 2010. It then considers the implications of this research for current debates about healthcare reorganization in England, and internationally. As the most up-to-date summary of what research says works in English healthcare reform, this essential review is aimed at anyone interested in the wide-ranging debates about health reorganization, but especially students and academics interested in social policy, public management and health policy.

An innovative account of social control and behaviourism within welfare systems and social policies, and the implications for disadvantaged groups.

This is the first book to explore the application of complexity theory to difficult practice issues in criminal justice and social work and brings together experts in this emerging field to address complexity theory from a range of perspectives, providing a detailed but accessible discussion of the key issues to whole systems approaches.

In this topical book older people's volunteering is studied in eight European countries at the structural, macro, meso and micro levels. Overall it highlights how different interactions between the levels facilitate or hinder older people's inclusion in voluntary work and makes policy suggestions for an integrated strategy.

The first project-based book in the New Dynamics of Ageing series offers a unique interdisciplinary perspective on older people's role as assets in rural civic society. The authors examine the ways in which rural elders are connected to community, the contributions they make and the groups to which they belong.

Some have argued that the rate and scale of human-induced global environmental change is so significant that it now constitutes a new geological epoch in the Earth's history called the Anthropocene (Zalasiewicz et al, 2011; Steffen et al, 2011). More than ever, there is a need to have appropriate and effective environmental policies that address the challenges of climate change, biodiversity, food, water and energy insecurity, environmental pollution, poverty alleviation and environmental equity. The short guide to environmental policy provides a concise introduction to post-war environmental policies, bringing together perspectives from a range of fields including economics, sociology, politics and social policy. It covers a broad range of issues, including causes and effects of contemporary environmental issues, policy approaches to addressing environmental problems, challenges to implementing environmental policies and future environmental challenges. This book is an essential introduction to all those interested in how policies can address environmental problems.

This original edited collection explores the value of public engagement in a wider social science context. Its main themes range from the dialogic character of social science to the pragmatic responses to the managerial policies underpinning the restructuring of Higher Education.

This is the first book in the UK or US to set on record the recent cultural phenomenon of the use of certain dog breeds - both legal and illegal - to 'convey status' upon their owners. Such dogs are easily visible on social housing estates throughout the UK and in projects in the USA and provide acquired authority, respect, power and control. However they are increasingly linked to urban street gangs as 'Weapon Dogs' and present a danger to the ordinary public especially those using parks and open spaces with increased injuries being presented at UK hospitals. Though initially slow to react, local and statutory authorities are now seeking to address the issue through action plans and interventions. Written in a fresh, engaging and accessible style, this unique book contextualizes the phenomenon in terms of sociology, criminology and public policy. It considers a complex mix of urban and social deprivation, social control of public space and the influence of contemporary media imagery and 'gangsta' culture. It will make essential reading for academics and policy makers in criminology and criminal justice and those working with animal rights/animal welfare groups.

At a time when transport is high on the political agenda and government decision-making is being vigorously scrutinised, there is a need for an incisive and accessible analysis of the key policy issues. This book is a highly readable introduction to the transport debate from two experts in the field. The authors celebrate the advantages of a modern transport system, but argue that years of poorly conceived and executed transport policy have resulted in Britain's transport system being far worse than it should be. They show that a substandard transport system creates economic, social and environmental costs, but demonstrate how these can be addressed through affordable and politically deliverable changes. Using a refreshingly novel approach, Shaw and Docherty use the familiar idea of the journey as the basis for their discussion. The book follows members of the Smith family as they uncover a wide array of transport issues, including why the problems we all encounter as we travel around actually come about; which policy trade-offs were responsible for creating them in the first place; what impacts we all have to suffer as a result; and what we can do to fix them. This lively and engaging approach will make the book ideal for a wide readership.

Poverty is not a neutral phenomenon, nor are social inclusion programmes neutrally conceived, designed and implemented.Their ultimate nature is built upon ideas, values, actors, politics and economic constraints.This topical book is one of the first to examine the social and political construction of anti-poverty programmes in Central Eastern Europe and their transformation from communist rule to the current economic crisis. It covers the approach towards the 'parasite' poor through to Guaranteed Minimum Income Schemes and illustrates how the distinction between different categories of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor has evolved over the years as the result of changing paradigms, combined with the pressure exerted by domestic and international actors, the European Union and the World Bank among others. This text breaks new ground for social policy students and scholars interested in understanding how differently post-communist welfare states have represented, legitimised and dealt with poverty, need and social justice in accordance with divergent normative frameworks constructed at national level.

In this book, leading experts examine how early education and care is organised and funded in eight different countries. Bringing together recent evidence, the book provides rich insights on how policies work in practice, and the extent to which they help or hinder the provision of high quality education and care.

Lavalette and Penketh reveal that racism towards Britain's ethnic minority groups has undergone a process of change and affirm the importance of social work to address issues of 'race' and racism in education and training, presenting a critical review of a demanding aspect of social work practice.

Lavalette and Penketh reveal that racism towards Britain's ethnic minority groups has undergone a process of change and affirm the importance of social work to address issues of 'race' and racism in education and training, presenting a critical review of a demanding aspect of social work practice.

Modern welfare states are confronted with a wide variety of social and economic developments, including individualization, secularization, globalization and changing preferences and ideologies of citizens. Using in-depth analysis gathered over 15 years, this book closely analyzes the consequences of these significant changes for social policies, offering theoretical and practical insights about their responsiveness. It includes a comparative analysis of recent developments in social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies in the Netherlands, showing how policy makers are continually trying to incorporate societal transformations into social policies while being obstructed by the path-dependent development of welfare state institutions. The insights from the case studies are related to developments in other European countries in the areas of social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies, and show how policy makers and politicians deal with multiple challenges, interests and perspectives on social policies. This book is essential reading for academics and students interested in the institutional development of social policies.

Bringing together a range of leading academics and experts on social democratic politics and policy, Why the Left Loses offers an international, comparative view of the changing political landscape, examining the degree to which the centre-left project is exhausted and is able to renew its message in a neo-liberal age.

This valuable book offers a distinct and critical showcase of emerging forms of discovery for policy-making drawing on the insights of some of the world's leading authorities in public policy analysis.

This book focuses on developments since the publication of the 2007 Corston Report into women and criminal justice. The challenges of working with women in the current climate also explored, translating lessons from good practice to policy development and recommending future directions arising from the 'Transforming Rehabilitation' plans.

The international contributors to this unique collection demonstrate the significance of care ethics as a transformative way of thinking across diverse geographical, policy and interpersonal contexts.

Highlighting what can be learned from individual experiences, the book analyses the changing welfare and labour market policies which shape the lives of working carers in Finland, Sweden, Australia, England, Japan and Taiwan.

This book traces the changing fortunes of radical and critical social work, and examines the theory and application of such approaches.

SPSS Step by Step: Essentials for Social and Political Science is a concise text for beginners and intermediate statistical test users. Clearly written and with no mathematical formulae, it features a chapter on qualitative data analysis; multiple regression; survival analysis ('the time until events'); and a brief cogent introduction to factor analysis. A logically ordered guide to analysing everyday problems, SPSS Step by Step is distinctive in being both easy to grasp and readable. Tests throughout the book are accompanied by clear worked examples. These include Wilcoxon; Friedman; Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis; paired and unpaired T tests; ANOVA; binomial; McNemar; Chi-square; Pearson; Spearman; partial correlation; simple linear regression; multiple regression; factor analysis; Kaplan-Meier and life tables. Invaluable for undergraduate and postgraduate students and academics undertaking or teaching research, this unique book will also be of interest to professionals in social care, the criminal justice system, health and education.

In this important, timely and thought-provoking publication, a wide range of contributors explore how "troubles" feature in "normal" families, and how the "normal" features in "troubled" families.