Childhood and Youth Studies

In this book, leading experts examine how early education and care is organised and funded in eight different countries. Bringing together recent evidence, the book provides rich insights on how policies work in practice, and the extent to which they help or hinder the provision of high quality education and care.

Lessons from child protection errors and mistakes in 11 countries in Europe and North America are drawn together in a stimulating study from leading researchers in the field. By comparing and contrasting impacts, responses and responsibilities, it deepens understanding of how child protection systems fail and points to ideas for risk reduction.

The perpetuation of poverty across generations damages lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources and academic disciplines, along with lived experiences, this book examines why poverty is continued across generations and what needs to be done to eradicate it.

Shedding light on the challenges and experiences of women and families within the criminal justice system, this book considers issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.

This book provides an understanding of what child welfare is, explores how it can be measured and sets out the implications for children's services in incorporating child well-being into their work.

Drawing on interviews with key international informants across 16 countries, this book examines how child support systems often fail to transfer payments from separated fathers to mothers and their children. It identifies how the gender order is entrenched through child support failure and offers possibilities for feminist reform.

The central interest of this innovative book is the role and significance of family in a context of poverty and low-income. Based on a micro-level study carried out in 2011 and 2012 with 51 families in Northern Ireland, it offers new empirical evidence and a theorisation of the relationship between family life and poverty.

As the new Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service takes over responsibility for the work previously undertaken by family court welfare officers, the experiences of the parents and children reported in this study will provide an invaluable service user perspective for the benefit of policy and practice.

The enduring and multi-faceted significance of families in society, and their value as a focus for the exploration of social change have ensured that families remain a prominent focus of academic enquiry. This book proposes a new conceptual framework that both challenges and attempts to reconcile traditional and contemporary approaches.

This book analyses the specific ways in which family lives have changed and how they have been affected by the major structural and cultural changes of the second half of the twentieth century.

Based on a unique longitudinal study, this timely book examines the initiatives introduced to help families and the impacts on them, their future prospects and the implications for policy.

This insightful book discusses the origins and theoretical underpinnings of family led decision making and brings together the current research on the efficacy and limitations of family group conferences into a single text.