This timely book examines parental rights to 'welfare state support' and parental responsibilities for child welfare in relation to recent social policy agendas pursued by the UK's Labour government, in the context of: child well-being research, state welfare analysis, sociological research about parental perspectives, and the multiple contexts of parenting and childhood. It calls for notions of parental rights and responsibilities which are more responsive to the diversity of parental perspectives and parenting contexts. The book examines the complex and changing relationship between the state and families. It presents new research and evidence on the perspectives of families, policy makers, and practitioners, offering a clear conceptual framework and analytical strategy to examine the four concepts central to family policy and everyday family lives.

Caring for people with disabilities often becomes an all-encompassing responsibility for one or more family members. To manage the multifaceted demands, caregivers must possess strong multitasking skills, including the ability to assist with daily life tasks; provide emotional support; help with financial affairs; mediate and advocate with health care providers. Maintaining balance within their own lives can become incredibly challenging for caregivers. More often than not, providing care for family members or loved ones occurs at the expense of the caregivers' well-being. And for caregivers who themselves have disabilities, it further complicates matters.

"Multiple Dimensions of Caregiving and Disability" addresses concerns that have been long familiar to the caregiver population and examines the current state of family care for individuals with disabilities. With a lifespan perspective, this concise reference reviews the literature on specific problems of caregivers and explores which care strategies are effective, promising, or lacking in available resources and support interventions. Contributors also explore the more fluid and subjective aspects of caregiving, such as feelings, spirituality, and family roles. Suggestions for future policy improvements, particularly within the public health sector, are discussed as well.

Topics covered include:

Family dynamics and caregiving for people with disabilities.
Parent caregiving of children with disabilities.
Race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and caregiving.
Educational, training, and support programs for caregivers.
Emerging technologies to aid caregivers.
Developing partnerships between caregivers and health care providers.

"Multiple Dimensions of Caregiving and Disability" is a must-have resource for researchers, scientist-practitioners, policy makers, and graduate students across such disciplines as clinical psychology, nursing, social work, public health, medicine, and social and education policy."

Modern welfare states are confronted with a wide variety of social and economic developments, including individualization, secularization, globalization and changing preferences and ideologies of citizens. Using in-depth analysis gathered over 15 years, this book closely analyzes the consequences of these significant changes for social policies, offering theoretical and practical insights about their responsiveness. It includes a comparative analysis of recent developments in social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies in the Netherlands, showing how policy makers are continually trying to incorporate societal transformations into social policies while being obstructed by the path-dependent development of welfare state institutions. The insights from the case studies are related to developments in other European countries in the areas of social assistance, sheltered work and labour market policies, and show how policy makers and politicians deal with multiple challenges, interests and perspectives on social policies. This book is essential reading for academics and students interested in the institutional development of social policies.

In recent years, there has been a virtual explosion of interest in service-learning. Impact studies have demonstrated a wide range of interpersonal outcomes including a sense of efficacy, connection to community, appreciation for diverse populations, and interest in course work to name a few. Yet critics have recently argued that the developmental outcomes of service-learning do not sufficiently examine cognitive development. Further, it is not clear whether interpersonal outcomes interact with the intellectual outcomes attributed to the courses affiliated with the service. This groundbreaking book examines whether exposure to and immersion in a service-learning program is in any way related to cognitive development. The researcher identified traditionally-aged college students who were selected by service-learning faculty as demonstrating an exemplary commitment to, and engagement in, service-learning. This study utilized The Service Learning Model, developed by Delve, Mintz, and Stewart (1990), to examine, describe, and assess depth of engagement in service at two points in time. William Perry s Scheme of Intellectual and Ethical Development (1970) was used to examine possible cognitive development. Results reveal a new pathway of deepening engagement in service. The growing body of research on college student participation in service-learning has documented the generally small, positive effects of service-learning on student development. A casual observer may attribute this effort to be successful, however, a closer examination of service-learning begs the question: Is a small, positive effect the type of learning we expect and are we accomplishing the learning objectives of the academy, not to mention, meeting community needs? The focus on what students are learning, rather than on how they learn best, leaves us with an unsettling uncertainty regarding the outcomes of service-learning. In order to focus on how students may learn best, this book focuses on an examination of individuals, as compared with groups, and of individuals that exhibit some of the outcomes that service-learning claims to promote. This book examines whether any students report that service-learning enriches their course of study resulting in the development of critical thinking skills (among other cognitive skills), in addition to interpersonal skills. This book shows that direct service experience involving an emotional or psychological (affective) connection with a community member or members receiving services prompts an assessment of the participants place in society. In responding to these emotions, students participated in service more frequently and with deeper engagement. Exposure to and immersion in direct service experiences, along with subsequent reflection prior to involvement in a service-learning program, are the mediating factors for the preparation of exemplars to initiate the interest necessary to develop cognitive skills. This book shows that interpersonal, affective development is the precursor for participants readiness for cognitive development in a service-learning program. A developmental scheme of engagement, student development interactions, recommendations for faculty for optimal development in service-learning, and recommendations for future practice are presented in this book that will be a valuable addition for all collections in education.

This book offers an account of the social production of (ill) health. The author theorizes how health and ill-health can be produced via the interaction of individual-level discourses of contingent work and broader socio-political contexts. One of the most important changes affecting work and workers in (non)industrialized countries over the last two decades is the spread of contingent forms of work. Contingent employment is a mode of work organization characterized by transitory employment relationships, such as short- or fixed-term contracts, part-time, casual/on-call, self-employment, seasonal, and temporary help agency work. It emerged as a significant form of employment in the context of the global capitalism-- globalization of trade, investment, production, intensified economic competition, and associated corporate responses such as organizational restructuring, downsizing, and outsourcing. In Canada, contingent work accounts for 13% of total employment, up from 9.7% in 1998. In the United States, upwards of 30% of workers are engaged in some form of contingent work. Similar labor market shifts are apparent in European countries.The increasing prevalence of contingent work has prompted concerns about its health implications for people who do these types of work. Nonetheless, the relationship between contingent work and health is poorly understood because existing research findings are inconsistent or inconclusive. The research reported in this book casts light on these discrepant health-related findings by examining contingent work from the perspective of workers, through an exploration of how they experience and understand this form of work and how these experiences and understandings might affect health. The study revealed a strong discursive aspect to workers' experience, and these discourses are the focus of this book. A theoretical premise of this study is that experience is inseparable from discourse. In other words, the language in which workers articulate their experience both constitutes and reflects that experience--how they experience their work is embodied in their discursive practices for talking about it. Thus, their experience can be understood, at least in part, through an analysis of the discourses of which they avail themselves. Informed by a constructionist theoretical perspective, the book describes and discusses the different kinds of discourses workers use to portray their experience of contingent work and how these discourses are related to evaluations of contingent work as inferior or stigmatized work and to broader socio-political and economic contexts. Another assumption of this study is that discourses are inseparable from the broader socio-political contexts in which they are constructed; indeed they exist in a recursive relationship with these social contexts. The findings reveal how individual-level discourses about contingent work shape, and are shaped by, neoliberal rationalities. That is, how individuals talk about and experience their work is formed in important ways by broader societal conceptions of work and citizenship. In turn, their individual discourses constitute and reinforce these existing societal notions. With arguments premised on the theoretical assumption that discourse is a form of social action, the book argues that the discourses of contingent work constitute a form of management of stigmatised work and that they cast workers as different kinds of citizens. It concludes with a discussion of the health implications of these neoliberal-inspired discourses. This book will be an important addition to collections in public health and public policy.

This key text from the best-selling "Understanding Welfare" series provides an unique understanding of the main theoretical perspectives and concepts used in social policy in a student-friendly format. A central theme is that theory helps us to understand policy, politics and practice. Written by a leading author in UK social policy, the book uses diverse examples from contemporary social policy to help theoretical arguments come alive and uses summaries and additional resources to help students and their teachers in their learning. It will be essential reading for 2nd and 3rd year undergraduates and postgraduates in social policy, social theory and related subjects, as well as their teachers.

This book explores recent social policy reforms and innovations in Chile. Focusing on four major reform episodes - health, pensions, childcare, and maternity leave - Silke Staab unveils the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the successes and failures of actors pursuing positive gender change in social policy. She shows that even in highly constrained settings positive gender change is possible, but that its scope and quality are bound to vary in response to sector-specific institutional constraints and opportunities.

Total Quality Management and Project Management have a symbiotic relationship in their planning, design, analysis, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation, as well as other related processes. This book accentuates the relationship between Total Quality Management and Project Management and other contemporary management concepts. These contemporary concepts include Six Sigma Methodology, International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Capacity Building, Business Re-engineering, Knowledge Management, Configuration Management, SWOT Analysis, and Total Quality Leadership, as well as fundamental business management concepts such as leadership dynamics, quality assurance, quality control, and continuous quality improvement. The book evaluates and analyzes the relationship between Total Quality Management and Human Resource Management, Public Relations Management, Marketing Management, Risk Management, Project Proposal Writing, and Resource Coordination and Management. Total Quality Management gives an exploratory overview of the contributions of certain national and international organizations that operate in Africa towards an effective and efficient delivery of products and services, especially on the implementation of capacity building programs in Africa, such as The World Bank, AfDB, CDC, PAID, ACBF, UNDP, AAPAM, CAFRAD, NEPAD, and others.

This book presents an exploration of the idea of the common or social good, extended so that alternatives with different populations can be ranked. The approach is, in the main, welfarist, basing rankings on the well-being, broadly conceived, of those who are alive (or ever lived). The axiomatic method is employed, and topics investigated include: the measurement of individual well-being, social attitudes toward inequality of well-being, the main classes of population principles, principles that provide incomplete rankings, principles that rank uncertain alternatives, best choices from feasible sets, and applications. The chapters are divided, with mathematical arguments confined to the second part. The first part is intended to make the arguments accessible to a more general readership. Although the book can be read as a defense of the critical-level generalized-utilitarian class of principles, comprehensive examinations of other classes are included.

The field of social policy has a rich history but policies on the ground are undergoing intensive change. Governments around the world are responding to political, economic and financial pressures, many of them linked to the global economic crisis. National agendas typically have social policy at or close to the centre. This latest edition of Social Policy Review presents an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship. It brings together research by an exciting range of internationally renowned authors and examines important debates in British and international social policy. This edition includes a special focus in the third part on work, employment and insecurity. Social Policy Review is essential reading for social policy academics and students and for anyone who is interested in the social and economic implications of government policy.

In the US and UK there has been a transformation in child care, family leave, social assistance and tax credits over the last twenty years. This book explores the factors behind these changes. With detailed case studies, it shows that ideas and the power to wield them are crucial factors in the transformation of family policy.

This book explores the dimensions and characteristics of social vulnerability in Western Europe. It provides a broad empirical foundation for recent theories on the emergence of new social risks in post-industrial societies, revealing to what extent social risks are compromising the 'normal' functioning of the European population.

The provision of care has been widely referred to as facing a 'crisis'. International migrants are increasingly relied upon to provide care - as domestic workers, nannies, care assistants and nurses. This international volume examines the global construction of migrant care labour and how it manifests itself in different contexts.

This book focuses on how EU welfare policies are implemented at the local level in 11 European cities and how local policy making addresses women's care responsibilities. The book studies the complex combination of and the relationships between local political processes, policies, institutions, structural conditions and outputs, as well as outcomes for the women's labour market integration. It demonstrates how cultural settings and multi-level governance patterns form the "playground" for local policy makers to formulate their welfare policies concerning service provision. The book further demonstrates how local production systems and the situation of the local labour market influence the prospects that women have in working and caring. EU welfare policy promotes the labour market integration of women as well as gender equality. The provision of adequate care services is vital in supporting women's employment. Within comparative welfare research, the focus has been on the national welfare systems and policies even if care services are overwhelmingly provided by local authorities that in many EU member states enjoy considerable autonomy. This book fills the gap in understanding local welfare policy making from a comparative perspective.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. Advanced Introduction to Social Policy offers a concise overview of the field that takes newer realities into account, without rejecting the insights found in the traditional social policy canon. Daniel Beland and Rianne Mahon draw on both classic and contemporary theories to illuminate the broad processes that are putting pressure on existing social policy arrangements and raising new research questions. This enlightening book enriches social policy research by moving beyond the methodological nationalism that has traditionally marked the field to include the role of transnational actors. Key features include: - a concise yet advanced introduction to social policy research - a close examination of changing gender relations and the increasing salience of ethnic diversity - a focus on both the advanced industrial world and the growing importance of the Global South as a site of social policy innovation - stressing the role of ideas in social policy - a global perspective on social policy that features systematic attention to transnational actors. In this lucid and accessible book, the authors offer a thorough overview of the field of social policy. The Advanced Introduction to Social Policy is essential reading for students, academics and policymakers alike.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Foreword.

"The debate over welfare suffers from lack of historical perspective. Now come Mink and Solinger to transform our understanding with a clearly articulated, carefully organized, and judiciously selected collection of key sources and illustrative documents that illuminates the past and present of aid to poor women and their children. Essential for classroom use, this book also belongs on the desks of policy makers and activists alike."
--Eileen Boris, Hull Professor of Women's Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A stirringly dramatic narrative of welfare policy history. Through the documents they select, Mink and Solinger bring to life an immensely important human drama, and they do so in a way that paves a path to a higher awareness of the deeply ingrained biases of gender, race, and class that operate in welfare policy."
--"Social Service Review"

Federal welfare policy has been a political and cultural preoccupation in the United States for nearly seven decades. Debates about who poor people are, how they got that way, and what the government should do about poverty were particularly bitter and misleading at the end of the twentieth century. These public discussions left most Americans with far more attitude than information about poverty, the poor, and poverty policy in the United States.

In response, Gwendolyn Mink and Rickie Solinger compiled the first documentary history of welfare in America, from its origins through the present. Welfare: A Documentary History of U.S. Policy and Politics provides historical context for understanding recent policy developments, as it traces public opinion, recipients'experiences, and policy continuities and innovations over time. The documents collected range across more than 100 years, from government documents and proclamations of presidents throughout the 20th century, to accounts of activist and grass roots organizations, newspaper reports and editorials, political cartoons, posters and more.

They enable readers to go straight to the source to find out how public figures racialized welfare in the minds of white Americans, to explore the origins of the claim that poor women have babies in order to collect welfare, and to trace how that notion has been perpetuated and contested. The documents also illustrate how policymakers in different eras have invoked and politicized the idea of dependency, as well as how ideas about women's dependency have followed changing characterizations of poor women as workers and as mothers.

Welfare provides a picture of the government's evolving ideas about poverty and provision, along side powerful examples of the voices too often eclipsed in the public square--welfare recipients and their advocates, speaking about mothering, poverty, and human rights.

White working class areas are often seen as entrenched and immobile, threatened by the arrival of 'outsiders'. This major new study of class and place since 1930 challenges accepted wisdom, demonstrating how emigration as well as shorter distance moves out of such areas can be as suffused with emotion as moving into them. Both influence people's sense of belonging to the place they live in. Using oral histories from residents of three social housing estates in Norwich, England, the book also tells stories of the appropriation of and resistance to state discourses of community; and of ambivalent, complex and shifting class relations and identities. Material poverty has been a constant in the area, but not for all residents, and being defined as 'poor' is an identity that some actively resist.

Becoming a caregiver is increasingly an inevitable experience for many people and, therefore, a likely life transition. Drawing on research and personal experiences of working with family caregivers, this book examines a range of family caregiving situations from across the life course. It seeks to capture the dynamics of caregiving in a number of common situations: caregiving during infancy, for adults who acquire a disability through accidents or illness, for older people with age-related issues, and caregiving by children and adolescent carers and grandparent carers. In drawing attention to key moments of vulnerability faced by family and informal caregivers, and by suggesting how to assist 'reconnection' at these moments, the book provides a guide for those working in the area of health, disability and care. Informal care is conceptualised as occurring with the context of personal interrelationships, these being nested within wider kin networks and linked with wider professional formal care networks. Informal care is seen both as an expression of social capital and as an activity that builds social capital. It is an indicator of resources of mutual support within social networks, and it has the effect of adding to the stock of social resources. The book makes a case, therefore, for facilitating the development of social capital by strengthening the capacity of informal caregivers and caregiver groups, and by improving the linkages with formal care organisations.

Leadership and management are increasingly considered important drivers in terms of organisational performance. Yet, despite being viewed as essential components of partnership working, there is relatively little thoughtful work analysing the relationship between the two sets of ideas - posing practical difficulties for leaders and managers of partnerships who are looking for evidence or guidance. This book provides a robust guide to the leadership and management of partnerships. It summarises recent trends in policy, establishes what we can learn from research and practice and sets out useful frameworks and approaches to address a range of problems that partnerships face. It will be an essential aid to policy makers, managers and practitioners, providing a realistic account of the main characteristics and expectations of leadership and management in partnerships.

Political economists have viewed large public expenditures as a product of leftist government and the expression of a stronger representation of labor interest. The formation of governments' funding bases is a topic that has not been thoroughly explored, and this book sheds important new light on the issue of taxes and welfare. Beginning with a clarification of the development of postwar tax policies in industrial democracies, Junko Kato finds that the differentiation of tax revenue structure is path dependent upon the shift to regressive taxation. Kato challenges the conventional belief that progressive taxation leads to large public expenditures in mature welfare states.

"Fair Play" brings together a selection of Danny Dorling's highly influential writings examining inequality and social justice. Offering crucial insight into the popular feeling that the United Kingdom is in crisis--a feeling made manifest in last summer's riots--Dorling provides a wealth of evidence that the country is becoming more politically, socially, and economically divided despite progress in areas such as education and reduced segregation. Dorling's work covers a broad range of subjects and will be of interest to anyone concerned with where one of the world's leading democracies is headed.