As the leading publisher in Social and Public Policy, we publish in the core social sciences to highlight social issues, advance debate and positively influence policy and practice.
Our list leads the way on conversations around inequality and social injustice featuring authors such as Peter Townsend, Kayleigh Garthwaite, Danny Dorling, Pete Alcock, John Hills and Bob Jessop. Series including the International Library of Policy Analysis and Research in Comparative and Global Social Policy bring international, high-quality scholarship together in order to address global social challenges.
Our key journals in this field are the Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, an internationally unique forum for leading research on the themes of poverty and social justice, Policy & Politics, a world-leading journal that is committed to advancing our understanding of the dynamics of policy making and implementation, and Evidence & Policy, dedicated to comprehensive and critical assessment of the relationship between researchers and the evidence they produce and the concerns of policy makers and practitioners.
Social and Public Policy
Swedish social assistance aims to ensure a ‘reasonable level of living’ for the least well-off in society. The benefit is, however, administered with considerable discretion on both the municipal and individual level. While numerous studies have shown substantial variations with regard to eligibility assessments, knowledge that pertains to differences in benefit levels, that is, the extent to which such variations are present and, if so, which factors co-vary with assessment outcomes, is quite scarce. This article presents analyses of generosity in eight so-called vignettes, collected among just over 1,000 social workers in 19 Swedish municipalities, including Sweden’s three major cities. Variations in generosity are analysed using multiple linear regression analysis (OLS), examining how basic social worker characteristics, professional factors and individual attitudes influence both overall generosity levels and generosity toward individual vignettes. The results show that, although variations in level of generosity are extensive, much of the difference remains unexplained. Among the significant outcomes that are identified, the fact that higher caseloads among social workers result in more generous decisions and that individual attitudes that favour more requirements and control lead to increased restrictiveness in assessments are worthy of note.
Available Open Access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
During the cost-of-living crisis, schools and nurseries have had to step beyond their educational purpose to offer free food to families through food banks. This book explores how these food banks operate, why families use them and how they affect children’s participation and wellbeing. Drawing on case studies of 12 primary schools and early years settings across England, it examines the impact on family wellbeing, home-school relationships and staff.
The authors argue that the situation will remain unsustainable if this welfare work continues to be unfunded and unrecognised, raising a significant question of who should and who can be responsible for alleviating child poverty.
This chapter is the first of three chapters which focus on research data based on interviews with staff working in schools and early years settings with food banks. The chapter explores how schools supply food to families, including where food comes from and how it is distributed to families. It is argued that schools use their knowledge of the local community to decide how food is given out, and the role of choice in affording families dignity. The ‘origin stories’ of the food banks are also explained, in order to consider in more depth why schools have decided to offer this provision. Central to this chapter is the concept of policy enactment which emphasises the importance of context. We discuss how context guides the operation of a school’s food bank, even though a policy is not being enacted in the strictest sense. Schools and early years settings can be vastly different, and this necessitates food bank provision on different scales and of different types.
The education sector has in recent years experienced significant challenges due to rising levels of need among communities, as families have struggled with poverty, including experiencing food insecurity during the cost-of-living crisis. This chapter outlines this context for the food banks in schools and early years projects by exploring existing research on the relationships between poverty and education, the impact of Covid and austerity, and how hunger affects learning and family stress. The literature on community food banks is also explored, including the key issues relevant to food banks in schools: the role of stigma, the social role of food and how food banks relate to the withdrawal of the state from responsibility for welfare.
Since 2008, the UK has seen substantial political, economic and social change. Following the global financial crash, there was a shift in the role of the state in providing a ‘social minimum’ – or a properly constituted safety net – for all. Austerity and cuts in public spending contributed to increasing conditionality within social security, and a programme of restrictive welfare reforms undermined support for those on low or no income, delivered in part through the UK welfare state. This article uses the lens of decent minimum living standards to examine the impact of austerity on social security support, income adequacy and minimum living standards in the UK from 2008 to 2023. Minimum Income Standard (MIS) research in the UK provides the basis for this analysis. MIS sets out what the public agree is needed for a minimum socially acceptable standard of living, that meets essential needs and enables social participation. MIS provides an annually updated benchmark, rooted in public consensus, against which the adequacy of benefits and wages can be assessed and tracked over time. The article provides an overview of MIS, before setting out how illustrative households have fared over this period. We chart the impact of austerity on the adequacy of social security and minimum wages, relative to MIS. We end by reflecting on the question of what sort of social security system the UK needs to ensure that all can live in dignity at all stages of life.
This second chapter of findings explores the impact of having a food bank from the perspective of those who work in a school or early years setting. The impact is significant for many of the participants, but diverse, and goes far beyond an impact on children’s learning. This chapter explores how adults perceive the effect of families having regular access to free food on children’s learning, participation and motivation. The wider social impacts of receiving food and other goods, including how children are able to experience and enjoy ordinary childhood activities, are then examined. These are important in understanding the impact of food banks in schools, and can be seen as part of a school’s practices of inclusion. A third section of the chapter focuses on the impact of families, which is seen by teachers to be far more diverse than simply reducing hunger. School staff’s perceptions of families include some deficit discourses, and it is argued that these form part of a continued deserving/undeserving poor narrative that persists. This points to the complexity of food banks as a social practice, but it is argued that schools are well placed to understand and cater for these needs.
In this concluding chapter, the wider policy implications of food banks in schools are discussed. Returning to the central argument relating to the responsibilisation of schools to address the problem of child poverty, the chapter begins an exploration of staff views of food banks as a phenomenon. The impact on budgets and staff, and the lack of recognition for this work within accountability systems are also discussed. The lack of policy in this area for schools is a key point in this chapter. Tools from policy sociology relating to policy enactment are insufficient to understand this topic, and require some evolution to consider how schools act when faced with a policy vacuum. The issue of responsibility is then considered in more depth, as the focus shifts to whether the argument made in relation to public food banks and the withdrawal of the state applies to school food banks. This leads to an argument for a more nuanced understanding of how responsibilisation is operating within the neoliberal state. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how we might conceptualise educational responses to the cost-of-living crisis, and why this research matters in terms of how we view schools and welfare state.
This third chapter of research findings explores how leaders balance the advantages of operating a food bank with the additional costs, beginning with a discussion of the impact on home–school relationships. This includes discussion of how difficulties can arise in relationships. Justifications for the food banks are examined here, drawing on both moral and practical reasons. Schools offer a practical solution, in that parents attend the site regularly and there is reduced stigma. School leaders are pragmatic about their unique position as the service which sees children regularly, arguing that if they did not provide food, no one would. This chapter examines the ambiguity of feeling about stepping beyond education into welfare-related work, and the complexities of decision-making around what can and should be done by schools.
This book is about how growing levels of child poverty have resulted in schools and early years/early childhood settings stepping beyond their educational purpose to feed hungry families during the cost-of-living crisis. Schools, nurseries, nursery schools and pre-schools offer free food to families experiencing food insecurity through food banks which operate on-site, in various forms. This chapter sets out our rationale for the research, which relates to the cost-of-living crisis in the early 2020s, and some background on the primary and early years education sectors. The chapter then sets out the theoretical framework for our analysis, and discusses the key concepts of enactment and responsibilisation. The research design and methods are then outlined. A final part of the chapter sets out the structure of the remaining chapters.
