Social work

This book examines youth justice in a UK and international context, highlighting the challenge facing all jurisdictions in balancing welfare and justice. It explores the impact of political ideas and influences on the structural and practical challenges of delivering youth justice.

Through the perspectives of young people themselves, this book reviews changes in policy and practices that affected the generation of young people who grew up in state care in China during the last 20 years.

Working in group care (ie residential and day services) is a challenging and complex task, demanding great skill, patience, knowledge and understanding. This book explains how best practice can be achieved through the focused and engaged work of individuals and teams who are well supported and managed. 

This third edition looks at how several decades of feminist social action have changed women’s place in the world today and updates some of the perennial challenges facing women globally to engage with new issues, including digital exclusion, sustainable development and environmental justice.

This research and practice based book considers the social meaning of women’s alcohol use and its treatment, raising concerns about the political role of ‘treatment’ in making women behave, or to be ‘well’. It challenges current policy and practice in the field, and aims to develop a new approach to women’s drinking.

This book demonstrates that all societies require a social work presence. It symbolises the importance of a community-near professional input to human flourishing and the development of social capital. It challenges economic and political trends that corrode deeply-held human and social values.

This unique perspective on the academia-society nexus is the first cross-national comparative study on academic engagement in social policy formulation.

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.

What is Professional Social Work? is a now classic analysis of social work as a discourse between three aspects of practice: social order, therapeutic and transformational perspectives. It enables social workers to analyse and value the role of social work in present-day multiprofessional social care.

There is a growing recognition of the importance of networking for the vitality and cohesion of community life. Now in its third edition, and substantially updated, this textbook combines practical experience and theory for people working with and for communities.

From Margaret Thatcher’s first government to austerity politics, Ian Cummins traces changing attitudes to imprisonment and the social state. With fresh insights and critical thinking, he demonstrates how increasingly punitive approaches to crime and welfare have shaped the neoliberal economy and created stigma around those living in poverty.

Draws on in-depth research with marginalised young people and the professionals who support them to explore the implications of a ‘vulnerability zeitgeist’, asking how far the rise of vulnerability in welfare and criminal justice processes serves the interests of those who are most disadvantaged.