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
You are looking at 51 - 60 of 19,469 items
This chapter introduces readers to a group of eco-conscious parents and their households in more detail—who they are, who they live with, their varied priorities in the sustainability realm, and their motivations for sustainability practices. These households try to make decisions for their families and balance their sustainability priorities with constrained resources, which often involves fairly major interventions in conventional ways of getting things done in order to bring their everyday practices into alignment with their values. This chapter argues that there is not a single “sustainability,” with households engaging in sustainability practices to varying degrees of intensity along a green spectrum. Rather, sustainability represents a broad set of values and beliefs for these households. The overlapping sustainability priorities of the households in this study include community well-being, the health of individual family members, nature, technology, and waste avoidance. The sustainability practices of these households are influenced by the unique combinations of priorities, resources, and constraints in each household.
Based on qualitative interviews with sustainability-oriented parents of young children, this book describes what happens when people make interventions into mundane and easy-to-overlook aspects of everyday life to bring the way they get things done into alignment with their environmental values. Because the ability to make changes is constrained by their culture and capitalist society, there are negative consequences and trade-offs involved in these household-level sustainability practices.
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.
This second volume from the Women, Family, Crime and Justice (WFCJ) network draws attention to current, real-life issues relating to the experiences, perceptions and social and criminal justice environments for women and families. The current edited collection has a dual focus: the punishment of women in the criminal justice system and violence, abuse and justice experiences. The first theme explores punishments experienced by pregnant prisoners, within an English women’s centre and by ‘BAME’ women supporting incarcerated loved ones. The second theme examines abusive relationships for LGB and/or T+ people, abuse perpetrated by imprisoned women and online misogyny. This unique collection brings together the voices, research and experience of academics, practitioners and service users. In doing so, it outlines the diverse and varied social injustices that continue to trouble those in our communities affected by the criminal justice system.
Domestic violence and abuse (DVA) affects many LGB and/or T+ people’s relationships, yet victims/survivors rarely seek help from the police or specialist DVA support services. This chapter reports on findings from the ‘Coral Project’, which focused on LGB and/or T+ people’s use of abusive behaviours. Focus groups were conducted with practitioners in what we term ‘relationships services’, working directly or indirectly supporting people with their intimate relationships. The analysis revealed varying conceptualisations of DVA in different practice cultures and an unmet need for support for DVA which falls below the threshold for criminal justice or specialist DVA service intervention. We conclude with recommendations for providing more inclusive and accessible relationships services.
Reflective practice has a prominent and well-established place in professional education and practice. At the same time, professionals need to consider their own personal liabilities during a time of litigious and blaming culture, and the economic benefits that arise from their continuing employment. This chapter considers whether the models of reflective practice are sufficient to enable reflective practice to occur for professionals on their own or in groups. Other roles in society where competence is vital to safeguard lives benefit from ‘safe spaces’ to discuss their practice without fear of liability or loss of employment.
The chapter will aim to explore why there is a need to create space at policy and practice level to accommodate the emotional needs of the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP). In a recent draft submission of a set of principles for AMHP services, acting as a form of guidance to local authorities and health managers, it dedicates little space to thinking about models for reflective space to support AMHPs in this multifarious and complex role. It speaks of the importance of health and safety, the risk of losing staff and ‘honest and open communication’. There is a growing recognition in social work about the value of reflective groups, yet little has been written about reflective groups and what model is both productive and sustainable, particularly in adult and mental health social work. The author argues that a reflective group underpinned by psychoanalytic ideas can bring value to the AMHP workforce. Using illustrations from two cases presented at an AMHP reflective group, run monthly (based on the Work Discussion and Balint models – both derived from the Tavistock Clinic). These cases will serve to illuminate how, through the reflective group, AMHPs have the opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of themselves and the interpersonal dynamics involved in the work. By having a bounded space for AMHPs that focuses on the anxieties and emotion of the participants, asking them to bring a case that is on their mind, while at the same time striving for a non-judgemental space, a ‘not knowing’ – a prelude to ‘getting to know’, a space for reverie and exploration – without there being a right way to do or have done and allowing imagination and curiosity to flow, will yield new lines of thought and enquiry.
This chapter introduces students to a range of relevant political ideologies and aims to illustrate how political parties move along the Left–Right axis showing how governments are rarely consistent in terms of ideology. Importantly, in respect of issues such as Black Lives Matter we explore neoconservatism, something which is often overlooked in texts. We demonstrate that neoliberalism is not necessarily a laissez faire approach and show how, although Labour may often be presented as left wing, under Blair they introduced approaches that reflected neoliberalism.
Resilience is often presented as a concept that is taken for granted but this is another concept that can be quite slippery. This chapter compares ideas about resilience as something that some have and others do not with ideas that position it along a continuum and as something which is a dynamic process. The relationship between the individual, the family and the community is important here but it has to be considered within a broader framework. Resilience affords the scope to explore the concept that young people are snowflakes, something which we reject.
This chapter provides a description of the resources that the eco-conscious households interviewed for this book have available to them to get things done in everyday life, and a description of the factors that constrain them. Households draw upon a variety of resources to get things done in everyday life, but these resources can be simplified to three major overlapping categories: money, time, and know-how. However, these resources are not limitless. In particular, households describe making decisions on a foundation of limited time and limited money, with time constraints by far the most common concern of my informants. Households are also constrained by social and cultural norms, particularly around cleanliness. Finally, information about sustainability and sustainability practices can be difficult to find, and in some cases accurate information is not available at all.
Risk can often be presented as something that is harmful for children and young people but this chapter considers that without risk our development may be adversely affected. The chapter considers a range of issues around risk from the idea of paranoid parents to our inability to assess risk rationally in presenting ideas about what a concern with risk means in a social context. We recognise that children and young people actively negotiate risks but that they often exist in a policy framework which does not recognise that and where removing immediate risks often exacerbates long-term risks such as health.
