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 of over 1400 titles.
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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Women and families within the criminal justice system (CJS) are increasingly the focus of research and this book considers the timely issues of intersectionality, violence and gender. With insights from frontline practice and from the lived experiences of women, the collection examines prison experiences in a post-COVID-19 world, domestic violence and the successes and failures of family support.
A companion to the first edited collection, Critical Reflections on Women, Family, Crime and Justice, the book sheds new light on the challenges and experiences of women and families who encounter the CJS.
Accessible to both academics and practitioners and with real-world policy recommendations, this collection demonstrates how positive change can be achieved.
Chapter 2 considers how families are formed and defined with a focus on socially liberal and socially conservative views as well as the way that this feeds into policy. A discussion of romantic love and of relationships points to how things which can be taken for granted are socially constructed before moving on to introduce and explain discourse. This also raises the issue of discourse operating as power and of the way in which discourses compete.
The subject of race inequality in mental health has been scrutinised by policy makers and researchers for decades. Despite government initiatives such as ‘Delivering Race Equality in Mental Healthcare’, there seems to be an intractability in relation to the closing equality gaps. In the midst of this, one of the decision makers in compulsory mental health work – the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) – is at the sharp end of the data that attracts the sternest criticism: the higher-than-average rates of detentions of racialised minorities. Though solutions may be found in attending to socio-economic obstacles to equality in mental health, practising AMHPs need to have the skills to critique and amend their own practice so that they can take account of the antecedents of poorer mental health in the lives of racialised people whom they assess, and to mitigate against the impact of their own unconscious bias and prejudices. This chapter revisits the data in relation to ethnic inequality in referrals, pathways and outcomes from Mental Health Act (MHA) assessments for racialised minorities. Drawing on the latest research, key decision-making points are analysed to identify where biases may be affecting practice. Attention is given to unconscious bias and individual skills in challenging models, practice and policies that institutionalise the disadvantage of racialised minorities.
The interface between mental capacity and mental health legislation can present a challenge for decision making. It requires a depth of thinking and a viewpoint that goes beyond a legalistic one. The reader is invited to reflect on the spirit of the legislation and on their own position and interpretations. There is an emphasis on emancipatory, values-based practice and a focus on choice. The chapter supports professionals to frame their own decision-making orientation and to use existing models, practice, policy and legal imperatives to support this. The chapter suggests that practitioners need to strike a balance between enabling people and sanctioning people, and that balance sits on a very fine line. The chapter therefore asks the reader to be aware of professional, organisational and legal boundaries and frames and to acknowledge and understand the complexities and nuances of decision making. Historical, contemporary and future frames are addressed.
The chapter evaluates the experiences of coercion inside a mental health inpatient unit. It looks at the use of seclusion and organisational responses to self-harm and aggression using a gendered analysis. The author considers reputation, where women are referred to as being ‘difficult to manage’, and their conflicts and ‘dramas’ are interpreted from a framework that values a masculine type of conflict resolution in a predominantly male environment.
There is very little in the way of research and literature in this area and this is a refreshing contribution. There is a lot of transferable knowledge here, and the reader will be further enabled to reflect on the relevance of gender and power as part of their own assessments and interventions
This chapter discusses the sometimes painful trade-offs that are required to balance priorities, resources, and constraints in the everyday lives of eco-conscious parents of young children. What happens when people try to live, in one informant’s words, a “less eco-hostile” existence? Because their choices were already constrained before the choosing begins, they frequently find themselves in impossible situations. Balancing regular life with sustainability priorities means that my informants are frequently faced with difficult decisions, and the compromises involved make them feel guilty and upset about their inability to live in a way that is fully compatible with their ideals. These eco-conscious parents of young children are part of capitalist society and contribute to its continued existence, but at the same time are dominated by it. They are just parents who are trying to make the right choices for their families and the environment in a society that feels out of step with their sustainability priorities, but this is a heavy burden.
The opening chapter provides a rationale for the underlying themes around practice boundaries and introduces the reader to concepts such as framing, frame reflection and policy drama. These ideas have relevance for compulsory mental health work whereby outcomes are understood to be disproportionate, variable and subject to biases. Boundaries are usually subjective, representing rules (formal or informal), safety, or a theoretical, interpersonal, literal or metaphorical divide. There is a need to frame and deconstruct these binary approaches to look at different frames for critical reflection. It goes beyond viewing scenarios in terms of lawful or not lawful; ethical or not ethical; ill or healthy; powerful or powerless; medical or social; us or them; rational or irrational; health or social; mad or bad; self-determination or social control – all ideas that are ubiquitous within psychiatry. The chapter acknowledges boundary work as the different positions competing for authority in mental health. Yet differences that seem insoluble can sometimes be resolved pragmatically by ‘reframing’ the issues and understanding the taken-for-granted assumptions around policy, statements of fact and value judgements. The chapter advances Peattie’s ‘double vision’ – the ability to act from one perspective while being aware of other perspectives.
Chapter 1 illustrates how students can frame their assignments, with Bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological model being an example of this. Bronfenbrenner is used to provide a frame for the book as a whole in terms of how children and families exist within social, political and cultural contexts that may change over time. A comparison of Piaget and Vygotsky is also used to illustrate the shortcomings of many psychological approaches towards child development.
This chapter introduces the author and the main premise of this book. Based on qualitative interviews with sustainability-oriented but “on-the-grid” parents of young children in Portland, Oregon, in the Northwestern United States, The Production of Everyday Life in Eco-Conscious Households describes what happens when people make interventions in mundane and easy-to-overlook aspects of everyday life to bring the way they get things done into alignment with their values. Household production and social practices related to three aspects of everyday life are examined: household waste, cleanliness, and indoor comfort in hot and cold weather. Because the ability to make changes is constrained by the culture and capitalist society, there are negative consequences and trade-offs involved in these household-level sustainability practices. Ecologically conscious households devote substantial time (even more so than money) to these sustainability efforts, but their efforts frequently stimulate conflicts, and the end results are rarely perfect. Beyond depleting people physically, financially, and emotionally, many of these pro-environmental activities are ineffective at best and are self-contradictory at worse—these paradoxical pro-environmental activities inadvertently reproduce capitalist society, and in doing so enable the continued environmental devastation that motivates these practices in the first place. Thus, promoting many household-level sustainability practices may be misguided, as this transfer of institutional responsibility for environmental protection into households results in even greater burdens on households, whose time, money, and emotional capacities are already stretched to their limits. The households described in this book shed light on the full extent of the trade-offs involved in promoting sustainability at the household level as a solution to environmental problems.
An evolving body of academic work is examining women’s experiences of online misogyny: aggressive, threatening or offensive communications and behaviours directed at women and affecting their participation in online spaces. Responses to experiencing this abuse are varied, and categorised by Jane (2017b) into ‘fight and flight’. Developing Jane’s taxonomical approach, this chapter examines some of the approaches women use to deal with online abuse. While a traditional understanding of justice is one which involves engagement with formal reporting systems, such as the criminal justice system and complaints to social media companies, these are not always seen as viable for women facing online abuse. Instead, alternative routes to justice have been sought and used, which are the focus of this chapter.
