Policy & Practice

This report explores risk assessment and risk management for people being discharged from psychiatric hospital. It breaks new ground by asking service users about their views and experiences. It also includes information about the harm that service users experienced and explores the perspectives of mental health workers, relatives and friends.

Connections provides flexible support to enable people with acquired brain injury to live in ordinary housing and to develop community links. This evaluation of the Connections service establishes whether or not the model satisfactorily supported people to live in the community and explores its usefulness for replication by other agencies.

There has been considerable recent policy debate and community concern on street sex work in local neighbourhoods. This report examines how residential areas characterised as areas of female street sex work are shared by different sections of the community and considers community and policy responses. Free pdf version available at www.jrf.org.uk

This book is the first to evaluate the recent reforms of UK legal aid from a social policy perspective and assess their impact on family law courts and advocacy. It argues that the reforms effectively ‘delawyerise’ disputes, producing a more inquisitorial justice system and impacting the litigants, court system, staff and process.

This book makes a significant contribution to debates about how people with learning difficulties may achieve social inclusion, and the part which lifelong learning may play in this. Its exploration of the links between community care, education, training, employment, housing and benefits policies in the context of lifelong learning is unique.

Working within the spirit of David Blunkett's visionary foreword to The learning age: A new renaissance for Britain, David H. Hargreaves' analysis challenges the myth that lifelong learning can or should be separated from school education. It asks what changes are needed for the culture and process of lifelong learning to become a reality?

This first report in the ESRC Learning Society series examines the key processes of learning, as embedded in particular workplaces, organisational structures and specific social practices. The authors explore the conflicts and barriers which organisations run into, even when they are trying to promote greater learning among staff.

Thoroughly revised to take account of the latest literature and international developments in the field. Drawing on global research and practical examples, Bason illustrates the key triggers and practices of public sector innovation.

Using global case studies and many practical examples, this book explores the innovation challenges that face the public sector today.

Drawing on more than a decade of work on public sector innovation, the author provides a clear framework for understanding and learning an emerging management practice, leading public design.

Policy makers have become reliant on mechanistic top-down audit and inspection regimes as the means of implementing public service reforms. This book sets out to redress the balance. It outlines the theory behind whole systems development and gives good practice guidance on how to effectively develop 'systems' to improve joined-up working.

Having a clear sense of which leadership ideas and practices are rooted in sound theory and convincing evidence, and which are more speculative, is vital for healthcare leaders. This book provides a coherent framework through which to scrutinise the leadership literature relevant to healthcare.