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
What prevents an individual claimant from accessing social rights in the UK? This chapter unpacks this question by focusing on the range of systemic barriers that they face – from the recognition of social rights violations to the attainment of effective remedies. It critiques the current, limited understanding of access to justice, highlighting the necessity of a broader view that encompasses factors that are often obscured, including the need for legal consciousness, emotional resilience and financial resources. Drawing on extensive empirical insights from practitioners, the chapter reveals the profound inadequacies in the current legal system, particularly regarding legal aid and representation for welfare claimants. In response to these issues, it argues for an approach that addresses procedural and substantive barriers to accessing social rights through timely and effective judicial and administrative remedies. It emphasizes the importance of embedding international human rights standards into domestic law to provide robust protections against social rights violations. Ultimately, it advocates for structural reforms and collective solutions to enhance access to justice and promote systemic change.
Available open access digitally under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
This book proposes a conception of social justice according to international human rights law. Social rights include everyday rights such as housing, food, fuel and social security.
Drawing on extensive research with frontline practitioners, the book frames access to social justice as a journey that should end with the realisation of an effective remedy. It highlights discourses that marginalise and disempower rights holders and reclaims the narrative around social rights as legal rights.
This is a unique contribution to our understanding of access to social justice from a social rights perspective complete with key recommendations for policy and practice.
This chapter maps the conceptual terrain for understanding social justice in the United Kingdom (UK), focusing on the state’s international obligations concerning social rights (SR) such as housing, food, fuel and social security. It addresses the substantive violations of these rights and the systemic barriers that impede access to social justice. By situating its analysis within the legal frameworks of administrative law, human rights and social justice, the chapter also draws from various social science theoretical lenses, including hegemony, power narratives and deliberative democracy theory. Empirical insights from practitioners across the UK highlight the multifaceted nature of SR violations and the inadequacies of the current legal system. This chapter proposes a model for improving access to social justice by recognizing and overcoming procedural and substantive barriers. It emphasizes the need for a multi-pronged approach to legal processes that ensure effective remedies and uphold human rights standards. In doing so, it advocates for the simultaneous development of both individual and structural remedies to achieve social justice.
This chapter takes a deeper dive into the concerns and challenges that emerged from the UK-wide empirical case studies by identifying various dynamics that interconnect laws, policy and public services to create the daily realities of policy in action ‘on the ground’. Informed by a critical discourse lens, it highlights how barriers to social justice are socially and discursively produced, and, more importantly, how understanding these dynamics can inform practice and chart ways forward to create legitimacy for social rights (SR) in the UK. It reveals how competing discourses marginalize those who experience violations of SR, pushing them further towards the margins and further away from social justice. If access to justice for SR is to be realized in the UK, attending to both structural injustice as well as a keen understanding of social and discursive barriers is necessary. This chapter concludes with a set of recommendations which, if implemented by the relevant decision makers, could begin to address the accountability gaps that plague SR adjudication in the UK, facilitating a rights-based approach and reclaiming the narrative for social rights as legal rights.
This chapter presents an overview of the legal obligations for economic, social and cultural rights in international human rights law. It is designed for a non-expert audience to understand the obligation of progressive realization better as it appears in the ICESCR and to provide insight into the interwoven ‘subduties’ to which the obligation gives rise. It draws on the international human rights legal framework, which includes the treaties, accompanying guidance, scholarly input and international treaty monitoring. It then moves on to explore the legal framework in relation to the right to food, the right to housing and the right to social security as they appear in the ICESCR. In doing so, it also provides insight into the UK’s compliance with these rights and demonstrates possible actions to enable further protection. Finally, it explores the emerging right to fuel as a derivative right under international law.
This chapter sets out the data generated from the empirical research via four UK-wide case studies that provide insights into the everyday reality of the justice gap in practice, drawing on the experience of a broad range of practitioners. Specific SR legal case studies from three of the four UK jurisdictions explore SR violations related to housing, social security, food and fuel, including access to Personal Independence Payment (PIP) for people with terminal illness. A more general approach was adopted to understanding access to justice for SR issues for Wales. Each of the case studies in this chapter provides glimpses of wider issues across the social welfare landscape, illustrating examples of processes and mechanisms that work together to constitute the jurisdictional frameworks for SR and the systemic gaps in the access to justice journey.
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.
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.
