Textbooks
Policy Press publishes a range of textbooks and other learning resources across the social sciences to suit a variety of course and learning needs. These are designed with students in mind and include many accessible features – from case studies and chapter summaries, to revision questions and illustrative boxes and diagrams.
The majority of our textbooks are available as consumer eBooks as well as in print and we are happy to discuss bespoke options such as print and digital packages or creating unique collections to suit your course needs. Our content is available through the key institutional content providers VitalSource and Kortext in early 2015, allowing seamless integration with VLE platforms. If you would like to discuss how we could help with your course resources, please contact pp-sales@bristol.ac.uk.
For more information about our textbooks, please see Information for Lecturers.
Understanding Disability Policy
Understanding disability policy explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities.
Rationing in health care
The theory and practice of priority setting
The challenges faced by those rationing scarce health care resources have intensified recently. In an accessible style, this book tackles this challenge by exploring the latest thinking and practice on priority setting methods.
Social Work and Poverty
A Critical Approach
Social work and poverty: A critical approach provides a timely review of the key issues facing social workers and service users in working together to combat poverty, covering key areas including access to food, obesity and drug use.
Understanding immigration and refugee policy
Contradictions and continuities
The book provides an essential background to understanding debates surrounding immigration and refugee policy. It examines different theoretical approaches to immigration and explores links between immigration policy, welfare and social exclusion, as well as documenting migrants' experiences in negotiating and challenging these policies.
What Works Now?
Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice
Building substantially on the earlier, landmark text, What Works? (Policy Press, 2000), this book brings together key thinkers and researchers to provide a clearly-structured review of the aspirations and contemporary realities of evidence-informed policy and practice.
How to Use Social Work Theory in Practice
An Essential Guide
In this clear and systematic book covering the both general practice concepts and theoretical insights, best-selling author Malcolm Payne shows you how to work with the main social work theories and practice techniques and pinpoint their strengths and limitations.
Children and Young People's Worlds
This substantially updated new edition sets out the contexts of children's and young people’s lives and encourages students to explore their complexities and contexts. Each chapter challenges students’ assumptions and examines crucial issues in the field, such as participation, race, and transnational childhoods.
Key Issues in Corrections
Key Issues in Corrections critically analyzes the most important challenges affecting the correctional system in the USA, offering a no-nonsense explanation of the problems of correctional officers, correctional managers, prisoners, and the public.
Understanding Health Policy
This fully updated edition of a bestselling book explores the processes and institutions that make health policy, examining what constitutes health policy, where power lies, and what changes could be made to improve the quality of health policy making.
Exploring modern probation
Social theory and organisational complexity
This book explores the politics of modernisation and transformation of probation in the criminal justice system. It draws upon innovative social theories and moral perspectives to analyse changes in the probation service and makes a timely contribution to criminal justice and probation theory.
Social theory for beginners
Aimed at first-year undergraduates studying sociology and related disciplines, this introductory-level textbook presents key ideas and concepts in social theory and an account of their intellectual background.
Understanding Human Need
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.