Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
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The need for paid care workers to provide professional, good quality care for those needing daily support continues to grow throughout the world.
This book explores the recent experiences of diverse paid care workers in four very different national contexts – Finland, Canada, South Africa and England – to learn from their experiences during COVID-19 and its aftermath. Drawing on care workers’ own perspectives, this book shows how recruitment and retention of paid care workers remains challenging due to the pandemic and demographic changes, their precarious labour market position, low pay and the difficulties of delivering care.
In healthcare, we come across daily promises of miraculous cures for various ailments. However, in the digital era, the dynamics of experiencing and practicing these remedies have changed.
This book explores the intersection of miracle cures and technology, showcasing their transformation into hybrid forms, such as handwritten recipes captured in photos or tutorials streamed through videos. Combining computational social media data with ethnographic insights from Vietnam and the US, the book captures the interconnected lives of these cures in the digital realm with a unique methodology.
Unravelling the intricate connections between social, technological, biomedical and non-biomedical spheres, this is a significant contribution to how social scientists study online media.
Drawing on the perspectives of women and children displaced from Ukraine, as well as local authority policy makers and service providers, this book provides a unique view of the direct and indirect consequences of war in Europe.
Part of the Social Determinants of Health series, this book reviews the socio-economic challenges faced by the UK and other European countries and suggests ways that these ‘wicked issues’ should be addressed. It is essential reading for local authorities, national governments and humanitarian organisations.
Life expectancy is about more than just health – it’s about the kind of society we live in. And in the early 2010s, after decades of continual improvement, life expectancy in the UK, USA and many other rich countries stopped increasing. For millions of people it actually declined. Despite hundreds of thousands of extra deaths, governments and officials remained silent.
Combining robust evidence with real-life stories, this book tells the story of how austerity policies caused this scandal. It argues that this shocking and tragic suffering was predictable, caused by a dereliction of duty from those in power.
The book concludes with an optimistic vision of what can be done to restore life expectancy improvements and reduce health inequalities.
This book provides an important lens for understanding how interlocking humanitarian crises caused by armed conflict, natural disasters, forced displacement and, more recently, a global health pandemic have adversely impacted teaching and learning.
It brings together evidence from multiple, diverse research-practice partnerships in seven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Niger, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. The authors provide a clear account of the key academic, policy and practice questions on education in crisis contexts and consider our capacity to develop just and resilient education systems.
From SARS to Zika, and Ebola to COVID-19, epidemics and pandemics have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Each outbreak presents new challenges but the responses are often similar.
This important book explores the dimensions, dynamics and implications of emerging pandemic societies. Drawing on ideas from sociology and science and technology studies, it sheds new light on how pandemics are socially produced and, in turn, shape societies in areas such as governance, work and recreation, science and technology, education, and family life. It offers pointers to the future of pandemic societies, including the expansion of technologies of surveillance and control, as well as the prospects of social renewal created by economic and social disruption.
Despite the pivotal role played by parents in the child protection process, little attention has been paid to how social workers perceive them. Exploring representations of parents within Children’s Services, at the levels of policy, organisation and frontline practice, this book uses the concept of citizenship to construct a typology with ten variants of parent-citizenship. The typology reveals the complexities of parental representations and their relationship to the content of policy, organisational environments and dominant societal themes, as it uncovers how social workers use their discretion to influence representations of parents in practice.
The book is a resource that can be used by students, practitioners, researchers and parents advocacy organisations to evaluate policy and practice and to contribute to the search for the best possible outcomes for families. Arguing that parental participation in the child protection process is essential, the book increases the visibility of parents and contributes to a much-needed dialogue about their position and the expectations of them in Children’s Services.
Wellbeing is a hot topic: governments, psychologists and a thousand self-appointed ‘experts’ all claim to promote it and yet our societies are experiencing record levels of mental distress and ill-health. Why?
Matthew Fisher presents a compelling new perspective on psychological wellbeing informed by evidence on human stress responses. He shows how our mental health is shaped by the social and cultural conditions in which we all live.
Developing arguments and strategies for a society truly committed to wellbeing, this book offers new ways to understand the problems facing modern societies and ways to respond through political and social change.
Are you a health and social care commissioner navigating the ever-changing commissioning landscape? With challenges such as limited funding, changing demands and global pandemics, we need to be clear on why, what and how we commission effectively.
This book offers you a warm welcome into the often-complex world of healthcare commissioning. Amanda J. Hughes shares personal insights from her commissioning career and practical guidance that will demystify the commissioning cycle and ease the journey as you strive to achieve the best outcomes for the population.
This book will help you to ensure valuable resources are directed to those with most need, that care is fair and accessible and that the solutions you put into place are sustainable for the longer term.
Questions as to the mental capacity of an individual to consent to sex are an increasingly important aspect of legal scholarship and professional practice for those working in care. Recent case law has added new layers of complexity, requiring that a person must be able to understand that the other person needs to consent and can withdraw that consent. While this has been welcomed for asserting the importance of the interpersonal dynamics of sex, it has significant implications for practice and for the day-to-day lives of people with cognitive impairments.
This collection brings together academics, practitioners and organisations to consider the challenges posed by the current legal framework, and future directions for law, policy and practice.
