Social policy

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.

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This book provides an accessible analysis of what gender equality means and how we can achieve it by adapting best practices in childcare and long term care policies from other countries.

This is the classic assessment of the state of child well-being in the UK. This fourth edition has been updated to review the latest evidence, including the impact of the economic crisis and austerity measures since 2008. An essential resource.

In a time of increasing inequality, why has there been a recent surge of support for political parties who promote an anti-welfare message? Using a mixed methods approach and newly released data, this book aims to answer this question and to show possible ways forward for welfare states.

Offers a rare and vivid insight into the everyday lives, attitudes and behaviours of the rich as well as the poor across the UK, demonstrating how those marginalised and validated by the existing welfare system make sense of the prevailing socio-political settlement and their own position within it.

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.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence

Uses original scholarship and empirical research to examine how Muslim women are represented in social policy discourse and situated within national debates about Britishness, the death of multiculturalism and international terrorism.

Universities are increasingly taking an active role as research collaborators with citizens, public bodies, and community organisations but they, their funders and institutions struggle to articulate the value of this work. This book addresses the key challenges in collaborative research in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

This important new book provides a framework for understanding the dynamics underpinning recent unprecedented levels of migration across, and loss of life in, the Mediterranean, casting new light on the ‘migration crisis’ and challenging politicians, policy makers and the media to rethink their understanding of why and how people move.

The unfinished revolution: Voices from the global fight for women's rights tells the legal and political history of the battle to secure basic rights for women and girls with essays by more than 30 writers, activists, policymakers and human rights experts, and contributions from women who have been victims of human rights abuses.

Drawing on eight countries as case studies Professor Alan France tells the story of what impact the 2007 global crisis and the great recession that followed has had on our understandings of youth.