Textbooks

This fully updated edition of an essential introductory text offers a concise guide to the key structures and concepts in social policy and is designed to work in partnership with unique, innovative digital content that adds depth and provides a truly integrated way of learning.

By providing a succinct evaluation of competing approaches to, and perspectives on, the idea and practice of international development, this book offers students across the social sciences a distinct and invaluable introduction to the field.

This clear and succinct text offers a valuable introductory guide to health and social care, helping people who want to study or work in the field understand why these services matter, how they have developed and how they work.

This accessible guide provides readers with an introduction to the key concepts and main developments in gender studies. Highlighting the importance of gender in the contemporary world, it is an ideal overview for students and professionals alike.

An essential introduction for all those interested in how policies can address environmental problems, bringing together economic, sociological and social policy perspectives.

The Short Guide to Criminal Justice provides a comprehensive, yet concise, introduction to the criminal justice system in the United Kingdom. It includes many student-friendly features such as case study boxes, tables showing key facts and figures and links to data sources and further reading.

The third edition of this long-established guide offers an invaluable, authoritative and concise introduction to community development. Fully updated to reflect changes in policy, practice, economics and culture it will equip readers with an understanding of the history and theory of community development, as well as practical guidance.

This compact, focused guide is perfect for students and others new to the field of gerontology. Features include further reading for each chapter, a glossary of key terms, and tables that provide easy reference points.

This collection, written by leading health policy researchers, examines the role that case-studies play in British health policy, covering key health policy literatures in the policy process, analytical frameworks and seminal moments of the NHS.

This book explores the choices that we make about our sexuality and their effect our personal lives. It analyses how social policy informs and responds to such choices through an examination of normative assumptions about sexuality and its role in forming, regulating and constituting welfare subjects, discourses, theories, provisions and practices.

This book provides busy practitioners with a ready reference for the day-to-day problems relating to sex and sexuality that they are likely to face in key areas of engagement, such as promoting sexual health, preventing sexual violence, working with those subjected to sexual abuse, and engaging with the complexities of contemporary sexualities.

This book provides a compact analysis for students and early-career practitioners of the critical connections between place capitals and the broader practices of planning, seeded within rural communities. It introduces the breadth of the discipline, presenting examples of what planning means and what it can achieve in different rural places.