Books published by Policy Press

First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, this book considers the impact of media-related factors on governance, policy, public accountability and the attribution of blame for failures.

What's wrong with work shows that how workers are treated has wide implications beyond the lives of workers themselves. Recognising gender, race, class and global differences, the book considers the ways formal work is often dependent on informal work and concludes by considering what might make work better.

A challenge to the assumption that there is appropriate employment available for people who are expected to retire later and the gender-neutral way the expectation for extending working lives is presented in most policy-making circles.

This book offers an empirically-based view on Europeans' interconnections in everyday life. It looks at the ways in which EU residents have been getting closer across national frontiers. The book considers how people reconcile their increasing cross-border interconnections and a politically separating Europe of nation states and national interests.

What is the social cost of privatising public services? And what effect has the failure of previous privatisations had? This book tells how social work services are now being out-sourced to private companies and how this trend threatens the safety and wellbeing of vulnerable children and disabled adults.

Research Ethics in the Real World highlights the links between research ethics and individual, social, professional, institutional, and political ethics. Helen Kara considers all stages of the research process and provides guidance for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods researchers about how to act ethically throughout.

Examining what makes something evidence-based and not merely evidence-informed, this book unifies the voices of police practitioners, academics, and pracademics. It provides real world examples of evidence-based police practices and how police research can be created and applied in the field.

Dorling brings together new material alongside a selection of his most recent writing on inequality from publications including the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, New Statesman, Financial Times and the China People's Daily. He explores whether we have now reached 'peak inequality' and concludes by predicting what the future holds for Britain.

Academics from a range of disciplines and from a number of European and Latin American countries come together to question what it means to have a `sustainable society' and to ask what role alternative social and solidarity economies can play.

Bassel and Emejulu explore minority women's experiences of austerity measures in France and Britain. They demonstrate how they use their race, class, gender and legal status for collective action in the face of the neoliberal colonisation.

This substantially updated new edition sets out the contexts of children's and young people's lives and encourages students to explore their complexities and contexts. Each chapter challenges students' assumptions and examines crucial issues in the field, such as participation, race, and transnational childhoods.

This book imaginatively explores ways in which practitioners and social work educators might develop more critical and radical ways of theorising and working. It is an invaluable resource for students and contains features such as Reflection Boxes and Talk Boxes to encourage classroom and workplace discussions.

Compares regional conceptions and variations of welfare in relation to national religious traditions across key parts of Europe. Using comparative case studies, the book examines the transition from research to practical policy recommendations, highlighting the similarities and differences between selected European countries.

Exploring secular and faith-based grassroots social action in Germany and the UK, this book provides new ways of thinking about social and political belonging and about the relations between individual, collective and State responsibility.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. This thorough analysis draws upon EU, UK, Irish and international law and sets the scene for a post-Brexit Northern Ireland by showing what the future might hold.

Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. What matters most in how poverty shapes children's wellbeing and development? How can data inform social policy and practice approaches to improving the outcomes for poorer children? Using life course analysis from the Young Lives study of 12,000 children growing up in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam over the past 15 years, this book draws on evidence on two cohorts of children, from 1 to 15 and from 8 to 22. It examines how poverty affects children's development in low and middle income countries, and how policy has been used to improve their lives, then goes on to show when key developmental differences occur. It uses new evidence to develop a framework of what matters most and when and outlines effective policy approaches to inform the no-one left behind Sustainable Development Goal agenda.

In 2014 an investigation into an alleged plot to 'Islamify' several state schools in Birmingham began. Known as the 'Trojan Horse' affair, this caused a previously highly successful school to be vilified. Holmwood, an expert witness in the professional misconduct cases brought against the teachers, and O'Toole, who researches the government's counter-extremism agenda, challenge the accepted narrative and draw on the potential parallel with the Hillsborough disaster to suggest a similar false narrative has taken hold of public debate. This important book highlights the major injustice inflicted on the teachers and shows how this affair was used to criticise multiculturalism, and justify the expansion of a broad and intrusive counter extremism agenda.

"e;Julia"e; nervously emerges from her shabby tent in the suburban wastelands on the outskirts of Madrid to face another day of survival in one of Europe's most problematic ghettos: she is homeless, wanted by the police, and addicted to heroin and cocaine. She is also five months pregnant and rarely makes contact with support services. Welcome to the city shadows in Valdemingomez: a lawless landscape of drugs and violence where the third world meets the Wild West. Briggs and Monge entered this area with only their patience, some cigarettes and a mobile phone and collected vivid testimonies and images of Julia and others like her who live there. This important book documents what they found, locating these people's stories and situations in a political, economic and social context of spatial inequality and oppressive mechanisms of social control.

Charitable fundraising has become ever more urgent in a time of extensive public spending cuts. However, while the identity and motivation of those who donate comes under increasingly close scrutiny, little is known about the motivation and characteristics of the 'askers', despite almost every donation being solicited or prompted in some way. This is the first empirically-grounded and theorised account of the identity, characteristics and motivation of fundraisers in the UK. Based on original data collected during a 3-year study of over 1,200 fundraisers, the book argues that it is not possible to understand charitable giving without accounting for the role of fundraising.

Race has been a prominent public policy issue in the UK for decades and there is growing interest in academia, but it is often caught in a repetitive cycle of progress and regress. This book analyses and bridges that gap by providing a unique insight into the relationship between race and ethnicity scholarship and the reality of 'real world' policy and politics. Drawing on the author's academic work as well as his background working in public policy bodies, it goes beyond 'impact' debates, public sociology, diversity and post-race, to examine the changing context for researching race and racism, including media and policy debates and the ways in which institutional racism has played out in public policy settings since the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. Combining theory and applied policy analysis in an accessible way, it guides the reader through the cultural and political changes in race and racism in recent decades and identifies the challenges and opportunities for policy and politically-engaged scholarship in future, clearly mapping the pitfalls and possibilities for critical work on race and racism. .

This exciting book presents 50 key facts related to crime and criminal justice policy in Britain. Offering thought-provoking insights into the study of crime, this fascinating "go to" book reveals the myths and realities of crime in contemporary Britain.

What is life like for families who are stuck in problem debt? Why do they fall into a spiral of debt in the first place, and why is it so hard to escape? The first hand stories in this book offer a unique understanding of life for families and children fighting a daily battle against poverty and debt. They give voice to some of the most underrepresented people in society, who are too often portrayed cruelly in the media and elsewhere. Drawing on research data collected through The Children's Society's Debt Trap campaign, this book explores the causes, implications and impacts of problem debt, challenges pejorative public attitudes and encourages more compassionate policy making to help families escape poverty and debt.

Drawing on extensive survey data and written accounts of citizen engagement, this pioneering book charts change and continuity in voluntary activity since 1981. Part of the Third Sector Research Series.

This book provides a critical understanding of contemporary forced labour as a global social problem and argues that it should be located within the broader study of work-based harm.

This book outlines a new, human focussed model for public services - an approach focused on achieving and maintaining wellbeing, rather than on reacting to crisis or attempting to 'fix' people.

Focusing on house building and conservation politics in England, Spiers uses his considerable experience and extensive research to demonstrate why the current model doesn't work, and why there needs to be both planning reform and a more active role for the state, including local government.