The voluntary sector was central to the COVID-19 response: fulfilling basic needs, highlighting new and existing inequalities and coordinating action where the state had been slow to respond.
This book curates rigorous academic, policy and practice-based research into the response and adaptation of the UK voluntary sector during the pandemic. Contributions explore the ways the sector responded to new challenges and the longer-term consequences for the sector’s workforce, volunteers and beneficiaries.
Written for researchers and practitioners, this book considers what the voluntary sector can learn from the pandemic to maximise its contribution in the event of future crises.
Between 2021 and 2031, the UK government is set to spend over £230 billion on its military. Who decides how to use these funds, and how can we be sure that the UK’s armed forces can meet the threats of tomorrow?
This book provides the answers to these crucial questions. Concentrating on decisions taken below the political level, it uncovers the factors that underpin the translation of strategic direction into military capability. In a series of interviews, over 30 top admirals, generals and air marshals give their own views on the procurement and maintenance of the nation’s current and future military capability. Their unrivalled professional knowledge and experience affords a fascinating insight into the higher management of national defence.
In this comprehensive account, Janice Morphet analyses the role and use of outsourcing within the UK public sector since the mid-1970s.
Morphet examines the many drivers for the use of outsourcing in the public sector, including international agreements, new public management, performativity and austerity. She also takes in to account the role and failures of the private sector and its response to the opening up of public sector competition.
By investigating the way that outsourcing has been used in different service sectors and across scales, the book illustrates the impact it has had on ideology, policy narratives and public expectations in the present.
This book contends that attempts to reform the NHS can only be understood by reference to both the wider social and political context, and to the organisational and ideational legacies present within the NHS itself. It aims to take students beyond a basic understanding of the historical development of health policy in the UK, to one that demonstrates an appreciation of the interactions between health policy, organisation and society.
Continuity and change in the NHS:
· acts as a crucial bridge between conventional textbooks on the NHS and contemporary health policy research;
· provides a theoretically rigorous but accessible account of the development of policy and organisational change not found elsewhere;
· presents new scholarship in the political economy of welfare in a clear format.
The book is aimed at third year and post-graduate students of politics, public management and health studies. It provides a theoretically inspired account of the development of health policy and organisation in the UK which will also be of interest to academics and researchers in the field.
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence.
The public and parliamentary debate about UK abortion law reform is often diverted away from key moral and political questions by disputes regarding basic questions of fact. And all too often, claims of scientific ‘fact’ are ideologically driven.
But what effect would decriminalisation be likely to have on women’s health? What would be the impact on the incidence of abortions? Would decriminalisation equate to deregulation, sweeping away necessary restrictions on dangerous or malicious conduct?
With each chapter written by leading experts in the fields of medicine, law, reproductive health and social science, this book offers a concise and authoritative account of the evidence regarding the likely impact of decriminalisation of abortion in the UK.
Most of the expansive literature on social citizenship follows its leading thinker, T. H. Marshall, and talks only about the British state, often referring only to England. But social citizenship rights require taxation, spending, effective public services and politics committed to them. They can only be as strong as politics makes them. That means that the distinctive territorial politics of the UK are reshaping citizenship rights as they reshape policies, obligations and finance across the UK.
This timely book explores how changing territorial politics are impacting on social citizenship rights across the UK. The contributors contend that whilst territorial politics have always been major influences in the meaning and scope of social citizenship rights, devolved politics are now increasingly producing different social citizenship rights in different parts of the UK. Moreover, they are doing it in ways that few scholars or policymakers expect or can trace.
Drawing on extensive research over the last 10 years, the book brings together leading scholars of devolution and citizenship to chart the connection between the politics of devolution and the meaning of social citizenship in the UK. The first part of the book connects the large, and largely distinct, literatures on citizenship, devolution and the welfare state. The empirical second part identifies the different issues that will shape the future territorial politics of citizenship in the UK: intergovernmental relations and finance; policy divergence; bureaucratic politics; public opinion; and the European Union. It will be welcomed by academics and students in social policy, public policy, citizenship studies, politics and political science.
The largest UK research study on poverty and social exclusion ever conducted reveals startling levels of deprivation. 18m people are unable to afford adequate housing; 14m can’t afford essential household goods; and nearly half the population have some form of financial insecurity.
Defining poverty as those whose lack of resources forces them to live below a publicly agreed minimum standard, this text provides unique and detailed insights into the nature and extent of poverty and social exclusion in the UK today.
Written by a team of leading academics, the book reports on the extent and nature of poverty for different social groups: older and younger people; parents and children; ethnic groups; men and women; disabled people; and across regions through the recent period of austerity. It reflects on where government policies have made an impact and considers potential future developments.
A companion volume Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK Volume 2 focuses on different aspects of poverty and social exclusion identified in the study.
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY licence.
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the landscape of voluntary action. Some volunteering projects had to be paused, while others were delivered in different ways, but across all four UK nations large numbers of people began volunteering for the first time.
This book provides an overview of the constraints and opportunities of mobilising voluntary action across the four UK jurisdictions during the pandemic. Sector experts and academics examine the divergent voluntary action policy frameworks adopted, the state and non-state supported volunteer responses, the changes in the profile of volunteers and the plans to sustain their involvement.
This book addresses the urgent policy and practice need for evidence-based considerations to support the recovery from the pandemic and to prepare for future emergencies.
How many people live in poverty in the UK, and how has this changed over recent decades? Are those in poverty more likely to suffer other forms of disadvantage or social exclusion? Is exclusion multi-dimensional, taking different forms for different groups or places?
Based on the largest UK study of its kind ever commissioned, this fascinating book provides the most detailed national picture of these problems. Chapters consider a range of dimensions of disadvantage as well as poverty - access to local services or employment, social relations or civic participation, health and well-being. The book also explores relationships between these in the first truly multi-dimensional analysis of exclusion.
Written by leading academics, this is an authoritative account of welfare outcomes achieved across the UK.
A companion volume Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK: Volume 1 focuses on specific groups such as children or older people, and different geographical areas.
Nuanced interconnections of poverty and educational attainment around the UK are surveyed in this unique analysis.
Across the four jurisdictions of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, experts consider the impact of curriculum reforms and devolved policy making on the lives of children and young people in poverty. They investigate differences in educational ideologies and structures, and question whether they help or hinder schools seeking to support disadvantaged and marginalised groups.
For academics and students engaged in education and social justice, this is a vital exploration of poverty’s profound effects on inequalities in educational attainment and the opportunities to improve school responses.
