Social Welfare and Social Insurance

Telling the stories of low-income families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic in the UK and offers key policy recommendations for change.

Developing the new framework of ‘life-mix’, which considers the mixed patterns of caring and working in different periods of life, this book explores the interplay of productivism, women, care and work in East Asia and Europe.

Between 1880 and 1920 many women researched the conditions of social and economic life in Western countries, driven by a vision of a society based on welfare and altruism. Ann Oakley uses the women’s stories to bring together the histories of social reform, social science, welfare and pacifism.

Drawing on a wealth of qualitative longitudinal evidence, this book casts light on women’s lived experiences of welfare and work. It uncovers the hidden gendered bias of conditional welfare reforms to challenge dominant political discourses, policy design and practice norms.

Explains the challenges that collective welfare faces, and explores the complexities involved in delivering it, including debates about who benefits from welfare and how and where it is delivered.

Academics, activists and artists remember and reflect on the COVID-19 pandemic in an inclusive commemorative overview which honours the experience of a global disaster lived up close and suggests the steps needed to ensure we do better next time.

Rather than being seen simply as social policy implementors, in recent decades there has been recognition of the unique insights that social workers can bring to policy formulation. This book offers a theoretical framework for understanding why social workers engage in policy, and the implications for research, education and practice.

This book offers a unique analysis of the challenges facing contemporary social work that considers the multi-faceted threats to the profession. It provides in-depth reflections on the future of social care practice and solutions for students and practitioners.

It is widely assumed today that the 'welfare state' is contracting or retrenching as an effect of the close scrutiny to which entitlement to social security benefits is being subject in most developed countries. In this book, fifteen authorities from nine different countries investigate to what extent this assumption is warranted.

The welfare we want? presents a detailed and unique comparison of welfare policies in the Britain and America. A team of international experts outlines, compares and contrasts the reform strategies pursued in each country and summarises the results to date. 

With welfare to work programmes under intense scrutiny, this book ranges widely across Europe to review existing policies and explore future ones. It shows how many schemes do not adequately address social rights and lived experiences, and consider alternatives based on theories of non-domination.

This book analyses fresh empirical evidence which demonstrates the gendered impacts of the new conditionality regime within Universal Credit. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mothers, it offers a compelling narrative and policy recommendations to make the social citizenship framework in the UK more inclusive of women.