Textbooks
Explore our diverse range of digital textbooks designed for course adoption and recommended reading at universities and colleges. We publish over 140 textbooks across the social sciences, and an annual subscription to digital textbooks is possible via BUP Digital.
Our content is fully searchable and can be accessed on and off-campus through Shibboleth, OpenAthens or an institutional authenticated IP. For any questions on digital textbook pricing and subscription information, please contact simon.bell@bristol.ac.uk.
We are happy to provide digital samples of any of our coursebooks by completing this form. To see the full collection of all our core textbooks, browse our main website.
Books: Textbooks
The Best Interests Assessor (BIA) Practice Handbook is firmly grounded in real-life practice and remains the only textbook focusing directly on the BIA role. Offering clear and practical advice on the legal elements of the role, and the values and practice elements of working within the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) framework, this is essential reading for BIA students and practitioners.
This fully-updated edition takes account of recent legislative changes, including the planned changes from the Liberty Protection Safeguards (LPS), recent case law and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on BIA practice.
Packed with advice on delivering effective, person-centred, rights-driven practice, it includes:
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case studies;
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legal summaries;
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decision-making activities;
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CPD support;
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examples of new case law in practice.
Looking forward, the book considers the new context for practice in the Approved Mental Capacity Professional (AMCP) role within the LPS and the potential roles that BIAs might fulfil in this new framework in the future.
Crossing the traditional divide between social work with children and families and adults, this text applies a lifecourse perspective, within an ecological frame. Based on the principle that practice drives theory, a practical approach for social work is put forward using five interconnected themes:
• duality of support and protection
• life transitions and life events
• intergenerational relations
• civic partnership and engagement
• health and wellbeing
Designed for students and practitioners, this text takes an enquiry-based approach using Critical ART (analysis, reflection and thinking). The book features:
• case studies
• research examples
• tips for Critical ART in practice
• further reading and resources
Nearly 20% of the population has a disability. Despite this, mainstream research often does not explicitly address the methodological and practical issues that can act as barriers to disabled people’s participation in social research. In this book, Aidley and Fearon provide a concise, practical introduction to making it easier for everyone to take part in research.
Requiring no prior knowledge about accessible research methods, the book:
• explains how removing barriers to participation will improve the quality of the research;
• covers the research process from design, to collecting data, to dissemination and publication;
• includes checklists and further reading, as well as useful examples and vignettes to illustrate how issues play out in practice.
This book will be invaluable to researchers from a variety of backgrounds looking to increase participation in their research, whether postgraduate students, experienced academic researchers, practitioners or professionals.
Approved Mental Health Professionals are specialist professionals authorised to make ethically complex and difficult decisions on the behalf of people with severe mental health difficulties. In this complex and challenging role, AMHPs must possess and deploy a range of skills, knowledge and values. This invaluable handbook considers these challenges and provides in-depth guidance on all key aspects of the role, including:
• working with mental health law;
• risks and challenges in a Mental Health Act assessment;
• staying safe as an AMHP;
• resilience as a trainee and practitioner.
Packed with helpful features such as illustrations, chapter summaries, discussion questions and further reading lists, this clear and concise book will be invaluable to students on AMHP and Best Interests Assessor programmes, as well as for professionals in the field.
This is an essential, practical guide to best practice in adult safeguarding which supports students and practitioners to develop the skills, knowledge and ethical awareness to confidently address the challenges of adult safeguarding across a wide range of practice contexts in the UK.
The authors explore the current context of adult safeguarding in the UK, together with the legislation, rights and principles that are the basis of best practice, and with a focus on developments in practice following the implementation of the Care Act (2014).
Practitioners are supported to develop their practice by exploring new research and innovative ways of working within the field, while promoting the importance of learning from experience and building resilience in adult safeguarding work. This book includes:
• helpful case studies and examples of professional decision making from experienced adult safeguarding practitioners;
• top tips and models to enable confident application of knowledge to practice;
• tools for reflection to extend the practitioner’s development.
New public health governance arrangements under the coalition government have wide reaching implications for the delivery of health inequality interventions.
Through the framework of understanding health inequalities as a 'wicked problem' the book develops an applied approach to researching, understanding and addressing these by drawing on complexity theory. Case studies illuminate the text, illustrating and discussing the issues in real life terms and enabling public health, health promotion and health policy students at postgraduate level to fully understand and address the complexities of health inequalities.
The book is a valuable resource on current UK public health practice for academics, researchers and public health practitioners.
Health inequalities are the most important inequalities of all. In the US and the UK these inequalities have now reached an extent not seen for over a century. Most people’s health is much better now than then, but the gaps in life expectancy between regions, between cities, and between neighbourhoods within cities now surpass the worst measures over the last hundred years. In almost all other affluent countries, inequalities in health are lower and people live longer.
In his new book, academic and writer Danny Dorling describes the current extent of inequalities in health as the scandal of our times. He provides nine new chapters and updates a wide selection of his highly influential writings on health, including international-peer reviewed studies, annotated lectures, newspaper articles, and interview transcripts, to create an accessible collection that is both contemporary and authoritative. As a whole the book shows conclusively that inequalities in health are the scandal of our times in the most unequal of rich nations and calls for immediate action to reduce these inequalities in the near future.
In an era of scarce social resources the question of the changing social policy constructions and responses to disabled people has become increasingly important. Paradoxically, some disabled people are realising new freedoms and choices never before envisioned, whilst others are prey to major retractions in public services and aggressive attempts to redefine who counts as ‘genuinely disabled’.
Understanding disability policy locates disability policy into broader social policy and welfare policy writings and goes beyond narrow statutory evaluations of welfare to embrace a range of indicators of disabled people’s welfare. The book critically explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people’s opportunities. It also situates welfare and disability policy in the broader conceptual shifts to the social model of disability and its critics. Finally it explores the possible connection between changing official and academic constructions of disability and their implications for social policy in the 21st century.
The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above.
The lifecourse perspective on adult health and on health inequalities in particular, is one of the most important recent developments in epidemiology and public health. This book brings together, in a single volume, the work of one of the most distinguished academics in the field. It is the first to specifically take a lifecourse approach to health inequalities and will be essential reading for academics, students and policy makers with an interest in public health, epidemiology, health promotion and social policy.
