POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Security

This is the first published research from the UK to address the neglected topic of the increasing settlement of Gypsies and Travellers in conventional housing. It highlights the complex and emergent tensions and dynamics inherent when policy and popular discourse combine to frame ethnic populations within a narrative of movement.

A broad, accessible introduction to the benefit system in Britain which can help readers to make sense of the system in practice.

Paul Spicker offers an original take on the British welfare state. He outlines the structure of services, the impact of false narratives, the real problems that need to be addressed and how we can do things better.

Pro-'workfare' governments justify their policies by claiming 'workfare' helps enhance self-esteem and promote the dignity of the unemployed. On the other hand, welfare activists argue that 'workfare' suppresses the dignity of unemployed persons. This book examines the concept of human dignity in this context and attempts to clarify its meaning.

This book analyses the current context and use of ICT in the public and voluntary sectors, building on this to provide practical guidance for managers and staff. Assuming no technical knowledge, the book provides ideas, tools and resources to think critically and creatively about current ICT practice and to implement positive change at all levels.

This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK.

This book provides a systematic comparative and longitudinal analysis of minimum income protection systems in 17 EU-countries based on a newly developed dataset.

Comparing data from 18 local case studies across 6 European countries, and deploying an innovative mixed-method approach, this book presents comparative evidence on everyday challenges in the context of the European Social Fund (ESF) and discusses how these findings are applicable to other funding schemes.

This book presents a psychosocial examination of changing relationships between service users, professionals and managers in the post-war welfare state. It challenges current emphasis on consumer rights by linking social responsibility to its psychosocial roots and theorises the links between experiences of care and development of social policy.

Focusing on a range of welfare issues this book examines the views, values and perceptions of a number of theorists from ancient times to the 19th century, including Plato, St Aquinas, Hobbes, Wollstonecraft and Marx.

This book addresses the development of increasingly individualised public social services in the EU. It focuses particularly on activation services that have become crucial in the 'modernisation' of welfare states, comparing their introduction in the UK, Germany, Italy, Finland and the Czech Republic.

Over the last three decades Britain has witnessed an unprecedented rise in the number of people receiving welfare benefits that has provoked fears of a growing underclass and mass welfare dependency. This book provides the first comprehensive analysis of the reasons for this growth and subjects notions of welfare dependency to empirical test.