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
This chapter has set out the prevalence of the five conditions for a cross-section of children living in a deprived inner-London community. The analysis shows that the number and identity of children affected by each condition is different, and by comparing the profiles of children with each condition against that of the rest of the sample, it has also clarified ways in which the five conditions resemble but are distinct from one another. It demonstrates that different sets of risk factors are independently predictive of each condition, and it also showed why single factors are unsuitable as proxy indicators of the conditions.
This chapter summarises the main findings of the study and presents overall conclusions. This book began by observing the growth of concern in children’s services with child well-being and arguing that this risks overlooking the fact that child ‘ill-being’ has long been a cause for concern, albeit conceptualised in several different ways, including unmet need, violated rights, poverty, poor quality of life and social exclusion. Each condition has its distinguishing features but overlaps with the others to varying degrees. Because they are different, the services required to tackle each one also require different orientations, despite the synergy that sometimes exists between them. Used carefully, therefore, all five concepts can act as useful lenses through which to view and understand children’s well-being, and so, hopefully, inform improved services.
Policy reforms to children’s services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success. This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children’s services. The book provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion; demonstrates the value of each perspective; charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community; including violated rights and social exclusion; and sets out the features that children’s services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms.
This chapter highlights possible contradictions between different service responses, and suggests how these might be minimised. It sets out a theoretical framework and some practical steps aimed at helping different stakeholders in children’s services to use the findings to improve the fit or ‘congruence’ of children’s services. This is particularly salient given the twin dangers of policy-makers either speaking with a forked tongue by bolting together several potentially incompatible initiatives or discarding a perfectly useful perspective in favour of one that is shiny and new.
Policy reforms to children’s services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success.
This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children’s services. The author:
provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion
demonstrates the value of each perspective
charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community, including violated rights and social exclusion
sets out the features that children’s services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms
This book should be read by everyone involved in developing, implementing and evaluating children’s services, including researchers, policy makers and practitioners.
Policy reforms to children’s services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success. This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children’s services. The book provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion; demonstrates the value of each perspective; charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community; including violated rights and social exclusion; and sets out the features that children’s services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms.
This introductory chapter sets out the three main aims of the book. The first is to identify the defining characteristics of the five concepts of child well-being — need, rights, poverty, quality of life, and social exclusion — and to explore the relationships between them. The second aim is to measure the prevalence of the conditions to which the concepts refer for a population of children representative of a particular community, and to compare the overlap between them. The third aim is to consider the implications of the findings for policy and practice in children’s services, defined here as those interventions organised and provided on behalf of children by agencies such as social services, health, education, youth justice, the benefits agency, housing, leisure providers and the voluntary sector. This is followed by discussions of child well-being in policy and practice, studies of childhood, and research on the five concepts. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
One of the main contentions of this book is that the way in which children’s well-being is conceptualised will shape the service response to which it gives rise. The aim here, therefore, is not to detail what quantities of which service are required to match particular problems in order to achieve specified outcomes. To do this would require in-depth descriptions of specific interventions. Rather, the purpose of this chapter is to deduce the contrasting styles of service that the five conditions (or types of ill-being) require — in other words, the features that services should have logically if they are to have the potential to be effective in addressing a designated condition.
Policy reforms to children’s services in the UK and elsewhere encourage a greater focus on outcomes defined in terms of child well-being. Yet for this to happen, we need not only a better understanding of what child well-being is and how services can improve it, but also the ability to measure child well-being in order to evaluate success. This book investigates the main approaches to conceptualising child well-being, applies them to the child population using household survey and agency audit data, then considers the implications for children’s services. The book provides a clear conceptual understanding of five perspectives on well-being: need, rights, poverty, quality of life and social exclusion; demonstrates the value of each perspective; charts levels of child well-being in an inner-London community; including violated rights and social exclusion; and sets out the features that children’s services must have if they are to improve child well-being defined in these terms.
This chapter begins with a discussion of the concept of need, distinguishing between thick and thin definitions of need. A child is considered ‘in need’ if their health or development is actually impaired or likely to become so without some remedial intervention. Impairment refers to the absence of normal healthy development; that is, when a condition usually interferes with daily social functioning and performance. Need is linked explicitly to the existence or likelihood of harm, which in turn is connected, critically, to the ability (or inability) to act in society. It is dependent on seven points of context, which are outlined. The chapter then considers the different approaches for measuring different types of need: expressed need, comparative need, and normative need.
