Social and Public Policy - Research

A vital challenge to the internationally accepted policy and practice consensus that intervention to shape parenting in the early years, underpinned by interpretations of brain science, is the way to prevent disadvantage.

This classic text provides the first comprehensive examination of the social policy of New Labour. It compares and contrasts current policy areas with both the Old Left and the New Right and applies the concept of the 'third way' to both individual policy areas and broader cross-cutting themes.

Britain's New Labour government claims to support the cause of human rights. At the same time, it claims that we can have no rights without responsibility and that dependency on the state is irresponsible. The ethics of welfare offers a critique of this paradox and discusses the ethical conundrum it implies for the future of social welfare.

A century ago, Seebohm Rowntree embarked on an investigation of poverty in York. The study was hugely influential in the thinking which led to the foundation of the welfare state and his research methods still have validity today. This classic work is republished in a special centenary edition with an extended Preface by Jonathan Bradshaw.

This major new book provides, for the first time, a detailed evaluation of policies on poverty and social exclusion since 1997, and their effects. Bringing together leading experts in the field, it considers the challenges the government has faced, the policies chosen and the targets set in order to assess results.

This unique book presents a new perspective on citizenship by treating it as a continuing focus of dispute. The authors develop a view of citizenship as always emerging from struggle through an exploration of the entanglements of politics, culture and power that are both embodied and contested in forms and practices of citizenship.

Spanning religion, moral philosophy and scientific understanding of the human conditions, this unique book adds to the latest thinking on morality, proposing ways to enhance the capacity of public policy to respond to morality and associated shifts in social mores in different cultural settings.

This unique book is the first to critique the past, present and future welfare state from a participatory perspective. Peter Beresford demonstrate the value of ‘user knowledge’ by challenging orthodox social policy and the limitations of both Fabian and Neo-liberal perspectives drawing on service users ‘ own ideas and experience.

Geoff Payne considers a wide range of dimensions of mobility and life chances to assess the causes and consequences of mobility as social and political processes and challenges well-established opinions of politicians, pressure groups, the press, academics and the public.

Modern slavery is growing despite the introduction of laws to try to stem it. This is the first book critically to assess the legislation, using evidence from across the field, and to offer strategies for improvement in policy and practice.

In this engaging and original book, John Clarke is in conversation with twelve leading individual scholars about the dynamics of critical thinking in the social sciences, and he reflects on the necessity of thinking collaboratively and dialogically.

Bringing together experts from both fields, this collection illuminates the myriad of ways that human geography offers rich insights conceptually, empirically and methodologically into the neglected spatialities of social policy scholarship, practice and experience.