Poverty, inequality and social justice

This inter-disciplinary study considers the past, present and future of mental health services and community care. From the origins of provision as we know it in the 1960s, it sets out the political, economic and bureaucratic factors behind recent crises and considers what the founding principles of community care tell us about the way forward.

Authored by two highly respected and experienced academics, this book demonstrates the rewards of studying social policy from an international perspective by avoiding the constraints of a single-nation focus.

One of the few resources available to provide an overview of human need as a key concept in the social sciences, this accessible and engaging second edition models existing practical and theoretical approaches to human need while also proposing a radical alternative.

50 years on from the Race Relations Act of 1968, this ‘state of the nation’ book provides an overview and commentary on how things currently stand in a wide range of sectors of society.

Focusing on online facilitated online sexual abuse, this book takes a rigorous approach to existing literature to address some of the most pressing public and policy questions on this type of abuse. It examines which children are most vulnerable, how their vulnerability is made, what they are vulnerable to and how we can foster resilience.

Lessons from child protection errors and mistakes in 11 countries in Europe and North America are drawn together in a stimulating study from leading researchers in the field. By comparing and contrasting impacts, responses and responsibilities, it deepens understanding of how child protection systems fail and points to ideas for risk reduction.

This book examines poverty in the context of the economy, society and the political community, considering how states can respond to issues of inequality, exclusion and powerlessness. Drawing on examples in both rich and poor countries, this is an accessible contribution to the debate about the nature of poverty and responses to it.

This engaging study of anti-austerity protest provides a valuable feminist perspective on activism at a time when austerity policy is disproportionately impacting women. It brings together lived experiences of activist culture and contextual analysis to explore the motivations and emotions associated with it—both positive and negative.

Drawing on a two-year multi-platform initiative, this book by award-winning journalist and author Mary O’Hara, asks how we can overturn the portrayal of poverty once and for all. Crucially, she turns to the real experts to try to find answers – the people who live it.

Placing children’s experiences, needs and concerns at the centre of its examination of contemporary policies and political discourses surrounding poverty in childhood, this book examines a broad range of structural, institutional and ideological factors common across developed nations and forges a radical new pathway for the future.

This unique study of social work provides a bold and challenging view of the subject from an anthropological perspective. Combining research and personal reflection, it explores cultural and symbolic representations of social work, evolving identities of social work practitioners and the ways in which they and society now view one another.

Based on a unique longitudinal study and offering a critical visual methodology of “collaborative seeing”, this book shows how a diverse community of young people in Worcester, MA used cameras at different ages (10, 12, 16, 18) to capture the centrality of care in their lives, homes and classrooms.