Policy Press

Textbooks

Education is at the heart of our mission to make a difference. Our goal is to support students’ learning with materials that foster understanding, confidence and skills.

Take a look at our textbooks below or browse by subject.

We have more resources, including free journal articles and Open Access titles, available on our student resources page.

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Showing 37-48 of 280 items.

Making sense of Every Child Matters

Multi-professional practice guidance

Edited by Richard Barker

This book considers the implications for practice of the 'Every Child Matters' (ECM) agenda for working with children, analysing the key issues from the perspective of the different professions that make up the 'new children's workforce'.

Policy Press

Youth justice in practice

Making a difference

This book examines youth justice in a UK and international context, highlighting the challenge facing all jurisdictions in balancing welfare and justice. It explores the impact of political ideas and influences on the structural and practical challenges of delivering youth justice.

Policy Press

Understanding the policy process

Analysing welfare policy and practice

Using core concepts of policy analysis "Understanding the policy process" builds up a full explanation of social policy change that can be applied to any aspect of welfare policy, public and social policy. This second edition of the book updates the first edition for the post-Blair era with international case studies from numerous countries.

Policy Press

Modernising social work

Critical considerations

Edited by John Harris and Vicky White

New Labour's modernisation agenda has produced an avalanche of change that has posed formidable challenges for everyone involved in social work, whether as service users, practitioners or managers. "Modernising Social Work" provides a radical appraisal of the far-reaching changes in their theoretical, historical and policy contexts.

Policy Press

Understanding equal opportunities and diversity

The social differentiations and intersections of inequality

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.

Policy Press

Social work in end-of-life and palliative care

Social work should help to strengthen individuals to achieve a respectful death and families to move forward in their lives. This valuable book focuses on practice interventions, advocating open communication and skilled interpersonal practice to help dying and bereaved people, their families and carers.

Policy Press

Radical social work in practice

Making a difference

This much-needed textbook provides a fresh understanding of the radical tradition and shows how it can be developed in contemporary social work.

Policy Press

The global social policy reader

This reader collects together for the first time a comprehensive range of key papers by leaders in the field from a wide range of sources that explain the concepts, actors and processes that constitute global social policy. The Reader will have broad appeal among undergraduate and postgraduate students in a range of social science subjects.

Policy Press

Understanding social welfare movements

"Understanding social welfare movements" is the first text to bring together social policy and social movement studies. The book provides a timely and much needed overview of the changing nature of social welfare as it has been shaped by the demands of social movements.

Policy Press

Religion, belief and social work

Making a difference

This book examines how religion and related beliefs have varied impacts on the needs and perceptions of practitioners, service users, and the support networks available to them.

Policy Press

The Peter Townsend reader

This reader brings together for the first time a collection of Peter Townsend's most distinctive work, allowing readers to review the changes that have taken place over the past six decades, and reflect on issues that have returned to the fore today.

Policy Press

Embodying identities

Culture, differences and social theory

This book shapes a new language of social theory that allows people to embody their differences with a sense of dignity and self-worth, enabling them to come to terms with the complexities of their lived identities in a post-modern globalised world.

Policy Press