Textbooks

Understanding childhood is a fresh look at how childhood has changed in recent years and reveals how children's needs and experiences have achieved a new visibility

This substantially revised edition of a highly topical text applies a critical approach to themes introduced in the first edition including economic development, heath and housing, and draws upon theory from Marx and Bourdieu to offer a clearer understanding of community in capitalist society.

Understanding crime and social policy encourages readers to reflect upon the close connections, and sometimes tensions, between crime reduction and social policy agendas.

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.

This book challenges the official discourse that shapes the debates on Equal Opportunities and Diversity (EO&D) at national, regional and European level and will be a key text for students and researchers of EO&D in many fields.

Understanding Family Meanings provides an overview of the basic concepts and theories related to families using readings with questions and analysis to encourage reflection and learning. It focuses on family meanings as the key underpinnings for academic study and professional training.

Written by a team of leading social policy analysts, this is the leading textbook in the field and provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of international actors and social policy formation in global context. It includes new chapters on global poverty and inequality, social protection, criminal justice and education.

The third edition of this leading textbook offers a contemporary, lively and accessible overview of international actors and social policy formation, identifying key issues, debates and priorities for action in social policy across the Global South and North.

This engaging and accessible text, now in its third edition, provides a comprehensive introduction to health and social care. This new edition has been updated to cover recent developments, including the integrated care agenda, potential regional devolution and austerity.

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.

Focusing on principles and theory and their application in the process of constructing housing policy, with boxed examples and case studies throughout, this fully revised 3rd edition addresses the range of socio-economic factors that have influenced UK housing policy in recent years.