Research
You will find a complete range of our peer-reviewed monographs, multi-authored and edited works, including original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the 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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As populations age around the world, there is an urgent need to address the inadequate and unequal provision of care and support to older and disabled people.
This book represents the first collective effort to use the concept of care poverty to analyse unmet needs and inequalities in care at an international level and from a social policy perspective. It presents pioneering empirical studies and novel theoretical and methodological approaches to unmet needs and care poverty.
This volume points the way forward for international care research and, in particular, for the growing field of research on inadequate care and support.
The recovery movement has gained significant traction in both the mental health and addictions field in the last 20 years, as a strengths-based approach to building long-term wellbeing. From this transition has come a need for process and outcome measures that are strengths-based and that has resulted in the development initially of the concept of recovery capital and more recently, the operationalisation and quantification of this approach.
This book provides a clear and accessible history of the development of this concept, and then looks at how the concept has been operationalised and used for a range of purposes. The first main theme is around the conceptual origins of the term and its relationship to strengths-based approaches to addressing behavioural health issues. The second is around the idea that recovery, previously regarded as a subjective concept hard to quantify and capture, can be operationalised effectively through the concept of recovery capital. The third core theme will be the progress to date in mapping and measuring recovery capital – reviewing the multiple scales that have been developed and published in this area and the underlying evidence base for each of these. The final section will review the impact this has had on the field in terms of changing practice and improving the quality of services that are available to people at different stages of their recovery journey.
The core aim of the book is to bring all of the existing evidence on recovery capital measurement and its application together, and to become the definitive and ‘go to’ book on this topic for researchers, policy makers, practitioners and people in recovery.
This book explores the critical issue of how to manage the ever-increasing demand for social care in Britain’s ageing society. With informal care, from family members and friends, now the dominant form of adult social care in the UK, this precarious system is struggling to provide enough support.
Exploring the relationship between formal and informal care, this book develops ideas for a ‘caring economy’, showing the potential to integrate paid-for and unpaid care within a framework of solidarity based on the strengths of the community, working to improve the quality and quantity of state-funded care provision while sharing unpaid support more widely as a community responsibility.
All too often, human systems are criticised for failing those they are meant to serve. One example is the growing awareness of the overlooked needs of adolescents facing harm in their communities. This has highlighted a need for new systems that enable practice that is ethical, effective and grounded in supportive relationships. But how can this be achieved?
Appealing to those interested in Contextual Safeguarding and beyond, this book shares ‘real-life’ lessons from research, covering:
• Practical guidance and tools for changing systems using embedded methods;
• Navigating complex relationships and emotions in organisational change; and
• Using theory and concepts to support change.
The book’s lively and creative style makes it accessible for researchers, students, professionals and anyone committed to system change in children’s social care.
This book examines the evolving value of caregiving in Britain, from the welfare state’s inception to the present day. It explores the shifts in discourse surrounding care, charting key social, demographic, economic, political and cultural changes which have led to the current ‘care crisis’.
The author examines five key themes: the tension within institutional Christianity between caring for the marginalized versus maintaining ‘respectability’; the secularization of the value of care and its interaction with emerging social divisions; the persistent expectation that women bear the caregiving burden; the economic and social undervaluation of emotional and practical care work; and the challenges facing the care and health sectors. The author suggests that recalibrating the tax system to shift the burden from incomes to profits may be necessary for the survival of welfare systems under these new conditions.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book provides an in-depth socio-legal examination of adult social care law and policy during the COVID-19 pandemic. It explores the tensions between legislation, policy, economy, and practice in what was already an under-resourced and overstretched sector.
The authors interrogate the vision and utility of the Care Act 2014 and explore the impact of emergency legislation and operational changes implemented during the pandemic. Detailing what happened to social care provision during this time of intense stress and turbulence for people who draw on services, for informal carers, and for those who work in the sector, the book highlights fault-lines in the system.
This is an invaluable resource offering timely lessons for social care reform and future pandemic preparedness planning.
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.
Three decades of neoliberal efficiency thinking about caring and care systems have resulted in a greater need for relationality in healthcare and social work than ever before. These support services extend beyond the giving of care and support to include the development of relationships between caregivers and their care recipients in their socio-institutional contexts.
The culmination of over 30 years of research, this book provides an extensive and critical introduction to relational working in care, education and welfare. It explains what relational work is and proposes a new, human-orientated theory beyond the simple needs provision model. Demonstrating the kind of professionalism required for such work, it explores why it is as important to be present with and for people, especially those in precarious conditions, as it is to give care.
This is essential reading for researchers, educators, quality officers, policy makers, students and practitioners interested in understanding the growing scholarship related to both care theory and presence theory.
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.
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.
