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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Child Protection systems across the globe are developing at pace, each reflecting their unique economic, social and cultural contexts.

This book provides an overview of 11 child protection systems from low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and discusses the formal and informal responses countries are making to the shared problem of child abuse and maltreatment. Within each chapter, vignettes give readers a window into how each country’s child protection system operates in practice.

This is essential reading for academics, social work professionals and anybody working within child and family welfare.

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The Education Sector’s Responses to the Cost-of-Living Crisis

Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

During the cost-of-living crisis, schools and nurseries have had to step beyond their educational purpose to offer free food to families through food banks. This book explores how these food banks operate, why families use them and how they affect children’s participation and wellbeing. Drawing on case studies of 12 primary schools and early years settings across England, it examines the impact on family wellbeing, home-school relationships and staff.

The authors argue that the situation will remain unsustainable if this welfare work continues to be unfunded and unrecognised, raising a significant question of who should and who can be responsible for alleviating child poverty.

Open access

This book powerfully sets out the case for Transitional Safeguarding, a new approach to protection and safeguarding designed to address the needs and behaviours of young people aged 15-24 who are falling between gaps in current systems, with often devastating results.

Addressing the gaps in the current system, it outlines how the specific needs of young people can be met through this approach. Written by leading experts in this area with strong practice networks, it presents up-to-date evidence for its effectiveness, and also uses examples from practice to illustrate the ways in which services are beginning to address these issues.

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A New Approach to Planning
Author:

The EPDF and EPUB are available open access under a CC BY NC ND licence. This publication was supported by the University of Essex’s open access fund.

How do young people transitioning from care plan their future lives? Planning is usually thought of as requiring clear goals and ‘future orientation’, but how might planning be regarded by young people whose wishes, hopes and plans have been repeatedly dashed? In this book Peter Appleton builds on research interviews with care-experienced young adults, and on cross-disciplinary theories of planning and of emotions, to develop a creative and non-dogmatic three-aspects model of planning for young people leaving care.

A valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and educators, this book puts forward a powerful case to think more broadly and flexibly about transition planning with care-leavers, placing the voices of young people at its heart.

Open access
New Approaches for Young People Affected by Extra-Familial Risks and Harms

EPDF and EPUB available open access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.

Based on the findings of the Innovate Project, a four year pan-UK study to identify the processes of innovation in care this book asks: how can services be re-envisioned and transformed through innovation? The authors provide an overview of the project findings and offer insights into the core conditions necessary for socially just and practice-congruent social care innovation.

Essential reading for anyone engaged in social care practice and innovation, as well as those undertaking continuing professional development, this book will aid the reader in developing a conceptual understanding of their experiences and support them in designing more informed responses to the challenges they face.

Open access
Innovative Research on Leaving Care and Transitions to Adulthood

EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY licence.

Young people transitioning out of care towards independence, work and adulthood are on the edge of these phases of life. Considering previously neglected groups of care leavers such as unaccompanied migrants, street youth, those leaving residential care, young parents and those with a disability, this book presents cutting-edge research from emerging global scholars.

The collection addresses the precarity experienced by many care leavers, who often lack the social capital and resources to transition into stable education, employment and family life. Including the voices of care leavers throughout, it makes research relevant to practitioners and policymakers aiming to enable, rather than label, vulnerable groups.

Open access
A Critical Introduction
Authors: and

For anyone studying childhood or families a consideration of the state may not always seem obvious, yet a good critical knowledge of politics, social policy and social theory is vital to understanding their impacts upon families’ everyday lives. Accessibly written and assuming no prior understanding, it shows how key concepts, including vulnerability, risk, resilience, safeguarding and wellbeing are socially constructed.

Carefully designed to support learning, it provides students with clear guidance on how to use what they have read when writing academic assignments alongside questions designed to support the develop of critical thinking skills.

Covering issues from what the family is within a multicultural society, through issues around poverty, social mobility and life-chances, this book gives students an excellent grounding in matters relating to work with children and families. It features:

  • ‘using this chapter’ sections showing how the content can be used in assignments;

  • tips on applying critical thinking to books and articles – and how to make use of such thinking in essays;

  • further reading.

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Life on a Low Income during COVID-19

Money was already tight for UK families living on a low income before the COVID-19 pandemic, but national lockdowns made life much harder.

Telling the stories of these families, this book exposes the ways that pre-existing inequalities, insecurities and hardships were amplified during the pandemic for families who were already in poverty before COVID-19, as well as those pushed into poverty by the economic fallout it created.

Drawing on the Covid Realities research programme, and developed in partnership with parents and carers, it explores experiences of home-schooling, social security receipt and government, community and charitable support. This book sets out all that is wrong with the status quo, while also offering a powerful agenda for change.

Also see ‘COVID-19 Collaborations: Researching Poverty and Low-Income Family Life during the Pandemic’ (Open Access) to find out more about the challenges of carrying out research during COVID-19.

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A Multi-agency Approach

Schools play a vital role in safeguarding children and young people, yet there has been little research into how schools identify and respond to child protection concerns, and their engagement with local authority children’s services.

This book highlights the findings of a major ESRC-funded study on the child protection role played by schools, their decision-making processes and involvement in inter-agency working. Crucial reading for academics, practitioners and managers in children’s social care and education, it evaluates the impact of recent policy developments, including the Academies and Free Schools programme, as well as the restructuring of local authority children’s services.

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Lessons for Reform from Aotearoa New Zealand

Exploring the current and historical tensions between liberal capitalism and indigenous models of family life, Ian Kelvin Hyslop argues for a new model of child protection in Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of the Anglophone world.

He puts forward the case that child safety can only be sustainably advanced by policy initiatives which promote social and economic equality and from practice which takes meaningful account of the complex relationship between economic circumstances and the lived realities of service users.

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