Textbooks

This book introduces students and practitioners to the concepts and methods required to undertake the analysis and review of policy and its implementation. Focusing on understanding and skills for a growing area of practice, it combines material from public and social administration with examples and application to social policy and services.

Brilliantly attuned to the demands placed on researchers, this book considers how students, academics and professionals alike can save time and stress without compromising the quality of their research or its outcomes.

This fully-updated, accessible textbook considers the theory and practice of critical social work in addressing inequality and social injustice. It is essential reading for students, educators and practitioners of child and family social work.

This accessible introductory textbook unpacks how students and practitioners can use theory to think about social work practice. Introducing the work of some notable thinkers as a starting point, the book encourages readers to think theoretically themselves.

Demonstrating the relevance of theory to political and policy debates and practice, this dynamic and fully updated second edition helps students to grasp the real-life implications of social policy theory. It includes a new chapter featuring debates around disability, sexuality and the environment.

Drawing on the authors’ extensive experience as educators, this book puts forward a new model of social work practice that both supports and protects service users across the lifecourse.

This book investigates masculinity/ies in relation to world politics. Explaining the gender is both an asymmetrical binary and a hierarchy, the book shows how masculinization works via ‘nested hierarchies’ of domination and subordination and explores the imbrication of masculinities with the nation-state and great power politics.

From the trials of Oscar Pistorius to O. J. Simpson and Michael Jackson, this innovative book provides a critical review of 11 high profile criminal cases. It delivers an accessible examination of the sociological and psychological processes underpinning the construction of guilt and innocence in criminal trials, the media and wider society.

This new edition of the previously published Understanding Brexit provides a comprehensive yet accessible account of the UK’s relationship with the EU, including the challenges faced by both state and society in the aftermath of Brexit.

This book gives students a critical insight into how children and families' everyday lives and experiences are shaped by policy and legislation. Providing guidance on developing academic assignments throughout, it covers concepts such as the family within multicultural societies, poverty, social mobility and life-chances.

This topical book engages with a wide range of issues related to social work practice with people who have sexually offended. Its accessible style and use of practice based learning exercises will help readers to reflect on theory, practice and developing emotional resilience.

Drawing on examples across a range of policy areas, this important new book examines the radically changing system of governance and delivery of social welfare in the UK and assesses how changes in social policy and governance interact in the delivery of social welfare.