Welfare & benefit systems

This reader brings together for the first time a collection of Peter Townsend's most distinctive work, allowing readers to review the changes that have taken place over the past six decades, and reflect on issues that have returned to the fore today.

This in-depth study explores the motivations for 'planned' teenage pregnancy in England. The findings have important implications for the Teenage Pregnancy Strategy and the increasing political agenda on young people and health.

A free pdf version of this report is available online at www.jrf.org.uk

Using the UK government’s play strategy for England (2008-10) as a case study, this is the first book to look in detail at children’s play within public policy. It is an essential tool for practitioners and campaigners around the world.

How to respond to the needs of working parents has become a pressing social policy issue in contemporary Western Europe. This book highlights the politicising of parenthood in the Scandinavian welfare states - focusing on the relationship between parents and the state, and the ongoing renegotiations between the public and the private. 

The politics of parental leave policies addresses how and why, and by whom, particular policies are created and subsequently developed in particular countries. It examines the factors that bring about variations in leave policy, covering fifteen countries in Europe and beyond.

This topical book outlines a model of positive youth justice: Children First, Offenders Second (CFOS), which promotes child-friendly, diversionary, inclusionary, engaging, promotional practice and legitimate partnership between children and adults to serve as a blueprint for other local authorities and countries.

This timely book addresses an overlooked area of criminal justice by focusing on the reality of pregnancy and new motherhood in prison. Based on the experiences of women in mother and baby units, it passionately argues the case for minimising harm, making key reading for criminology and midwifery students and researchers.

This attractive and accessible textbook analyses and examines the policies, services and practice skills needed for collaborative, effective and equitable work with children.

As citizens we need information to exercise our social rights and responsibilities. However, information provision about welfare services is patchy and the 'information poor' are often disadvantaged in access to those services. This book explores how government information policies directly influence which service users claim their entitlements.

This book offers an analysis of the limitations of child attachment theory as the basis for decision-making in child welfare practice, examining controversies and offering a new pedagogy that is responsive to the changing dynamics of contemporary families.

Inspired by ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment.

Christopher Deeming and Paul Smyth, together with internationally renowned contributors, illustrate how the merging of ‘social investment’ and ‘inclusive growth and development’ agendas, together with the environmental imperative of ‘sustainability’, is forging an important new social policy framework and shaping a new global development agenda.