The Chinese government has recently adopted a radical welfare approach by contracting out social services to non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This is a big departure from its traditional welfare model, whereby all public services were directly delivered by government agencies. This book examines this new welfare approach. It analyses the implementation of various types of services for individuals, families and communities - including medical social services, care of the elderly, probation services and much more. It discusses important issues arising from contracting out, considers the nature of the contracted NGOs and their services, and explores major problems encountered by both government agencies and NGOs. This book also compares the similarities and differences of contracting policies in different cities. Overall, the book provides an overview of one of the most important welfare policy changes in contemporary China.

Will appeal to a wide international readership interested in the welfare state, social policy, poverty, and charity, by developing transferable conceptual contributions and undertaking cross-national comparative analyses. Conceptualises the role of charity to people who are poor in wealthy countries. Outlines a set of practical and conceptual ideas for how charity can be re-imagined to contribute to justice in an unjust society.

This book unravels the lives, needs and experiences of Nigerian and Ghanaian women working in prostitution in Brussels. This volume casts a light on the working conditions and the experiences of 38 women of Nigerian and Ghanaian origin, whose daily struggles and challenges are recalled from interviews in the field. Working within the red-light district of Brussels, an area with high crime rates and lacking in basic healthcare provision, the women are faced with a number of issues on a daily basis, ranging from security and health-related concerns, to work-related stress, discrimination and perceived stigma. Full voice is given to their stories, as well as contributions from state actors and local inhabitants, with the chief aim of building safe and healthy places for both residents and workers alike. The authors conclude in presenting clear recommendations and tools for practitioners and policy makers, designed to improve the outcomes of migrant women working not just within the red-light district of Brussels, but also within wider European and global contexts. This book will be of particular interest for researchers and students of Migration Politics, Development Studies, Social Work and Sociology, as well as a useful guide for policy makers and practitioners in the field.

This book identifies specific changes to bring U.S. social policy in accord with the Information Age of the 21st century, in contrast to the policy infrastructure of industrial America. Welfare State 3.0: Social Policy after the Pandemic acknowledges the existing social infrastructure, considers viable options, and provides supporting data to suggest social policy reform by four strategies: consolidating programs, harmonizing applications, expanding equity, and conducting experiments. The book favors discreet, poignant proposals of social programs. In 12 chapters, the text provides an analysis that honors past accomplishments, recognizes the influence of established stakeholders, and concedes program inadequacies, while plotting specific opportunities for policy improvement. In contrast to liberalism's tendency toward idealism, the book adopts a realpolitik appreciation for social policy. Written by one of the most respected academics of U.S. social policy, this book will be required reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of social policy, social work, sociology, and U.S. politics more broadly.

This book identifies specific changes to bring U.S. social policy in accord with the Information Age of the 21st century, in contrast to the policy infrastructure of industrial America. Welfare State 3.0: Social Policy after the Pandemic acknowledges the existing social infrastructure, considers viable options, and provides supporting data to suggest social policy reform by four strategies: consolidating programs, harmonizing applications, expanding equity, and conducting experiments. The book favors discreet, poignant proposals of social programs. In 12 chapters, the text provides an analysis that honors past accomplishments, recognizes the influence of established stakeholders, and concedes program inadequacies, while plotting specific opportunities for policy improvement. In contrast to liberalism's tendency toward idealism, the book adopts a realpolitik appreciation for social policy. Written by one of the most respected academics of U.S. social policy, this book will be required reading for all undergraduate and postgraduate students of social policy, social work, sociology, and U.S. politics more broadly.

Drawing together a mix of internationally renown contributors, Social Policy Review 28 provides an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship. With specially commissioned reviews of pensions, health care, conditionality and housing this book examines important debates in the field. A themed section on personalised budgets examines the introduction and consequences of personalisation of funding from the perspectives of the UK, Australia and Norway and considers the impact of such funding on vulnerable groups such as the elderly and the homeless. Published in association with the SPA this comprehensive discussion and analysis of the current state of social policy will be of keen interest to academics and students.

Britain is a society increasingly divided between the super-affluent and the impoverished. A Sharing Economy proposes radical new ways to close the growing income gap and spread social opportunities. Drawing on overseas examples, Stewart Lansley argues that mobilising the huge financial potential of Britain's public assets could pay for a pioneering new social wealth fund. Such a fund would boost economic and social investment, and, by building the social asset base, simultaneously strengthen the public finances. A powerful new policy tool, such funds would ensure that more of the gains from economic activity are shared by all and not colonised by a powerful few. This is a vital new contribution to the pressing debate on how to reduce inequality and combat austerity.

Service-learning research has been growing and expanding around the world. While much of the early work was carried out in the US and Europe, such efforts have been developing in Asia for the past few decades. The use of the term, 'service-learning' was not popular, while use of community engagement, volunteerism, social services are more common among community practitioners and academics, with the rapid development of service-learning, both research and community-based programs have been growing throughout Asia over the last decade. One of the major movements in that part of the world has been the Service-Learning Asia Network (started in 2005), where more than 11 countries have unified to share their efforts collectively through conferences and journals. In this new book we have examples from five (5) different places: China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and India. These models follow a recent publication of Asian research found in the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, published in Summer 2019 after the 7th Asia Pacific Regional Service-Learning conference in Singapore. The chapters represent some of the exciting work that is developing in Asia, highlighting the rich and powerful connections between universities and communities throughout the region. Excellent examples of various kinds of study, from case studies, to qualitative research, to mixed method designs are included. In addition, the focus of the studies, from student learning, community change, innovative practice, and institutional development and change are provided to illustrate the rich diversity of work occurring throughout Asia.

The only up-to-date, accessibly written short guide to community development, this third edition offers an invaluable and authoritative introduction. Fully updated to reflect changes in policy, practice, economics and culture, it will equip readers with an understanding of the history and theory of community development, as well as practical guidance on how to do it. This is a key text for all students and practitioners working with communities. It includes: * a broad overview of core themes, concepts, basic practices and key issues in community development; * an analysis of the impact of COVID-19 on community life and well-being, along with the implications for longer-term community support; * additional brand new content on the pressing issues of democratic decline, social fragmentation and isolation, social care pressures, technological developments and climate change.

A robust guide to the leadership and management of inter-agency collaborative endeavours. It summarises recent trends in policy, establishes what we can learn from research and practice, and uses international evidence to set out useful frameworks and approaches to address a range of problems that collaborations face.

This substantially revised edition of a highly topical text draws upon theory from Marx and Bourdieu to offer a clearer understanding of community in capitalist society. The book takes a more critical look at the literature on community, community development and the politics of community, and applies this critical approach to themes introduced in the first edition on economic development, learning, health and social care, housing, and policing, taking into account the changes in policy that have taken place, particularly in the UK, since the first edition was written. It will be a valuable resource for researchers and students of social policy, sociology and politics as well as areas of housing and urban studies.

Since the early 1990s, long-term care policies have undergone significant transformations across OECD countries. In some countries these changes have responded to the introduction of major policy reforms while in others, significant transformations have come about through the accumulation of incremental policy changes. The book brings together evidence from over 15 years of care reform to examine changes in long-term care systems occurring in OECD countries. It discusses and compares key changes in national policies and examines the main successes and failures of recent reforms. Finally, it suggests possible policy strategies for the future in the sector. With contributions from a wide range of experts across EECD countries, this book is essential reading for academics, researchers and policy-makers in the field of long-term care policy.

Community-Based Participatory Action Research: It's All About the Community is deeply grounded in the belief that social sciences research should have a direct connection to helping people and improving communities. This text explores how to achieve community engagement and community involvement to bring about positive change through research and action. The opening chapter introduces participatory action research, an inclusive process that involves researchers as well as subjects, leverages the strengths of all involved, and features strong social justice tenets that lead to a positive change outcome. Additional chapters provide an historical overview of community-based participatory research and its development, as well as models for defining and mapping communities. Readers explore the unique research processes and distinctions of participatory action research and community-based participatory action research (CBPAR). They are provided with a step-by-step guide to conducting CBPAR, grow to understand its transformative nature, and are encouraged to think through ethical considerations. An accessible and concise guide, Community-Based Participatory Action Research is an outstanding supplementary resource for courses with focus in social sciences research.

Cities tend to become more crowded, the high rise buildings taller, the traffic nodes more complex. The volume of hazardous cargo passing increases with the growth of economy and the expansion of technology. As we have seen in the recent past, cities can become too easily a focus of terror. To counter these trends measures have to be taken. This book presents an overview of threats and measures based on a NATO advanced research workshop meant to make an inventory of items on which, for making progress research will be worthwhile to perform. The spectrum of subjects is broad. It covers various types of hazard threats, the mechanisms of collapse of structures including the doubts about why the WTC buildings collapsed following the impact of aircraft and the ensuing fires. New materials will offer improvements for protection, progress will be described in analyzing the robustness of structures against loading of various nature, and what can be gained by well performed risk control and planning of emergency response, taking trade-offs into account and requiring the new approach of scenario analysis. The book also contains an excellent report about the people flow along evacuation routes. It finally considers warning and communication systems and ways to motivate people to protect themselves.

Social policy scholars and practitioners work with concepts such as "welfare state" and "social security" but where do these concepts come from and how has their meaning changed over time? Which are the dominant social policy concepts and how are they contested? What characterises social policy language in specific countries and regions of the world and how do social concepts travel between countries? Addressing such questions in a systematic manner for the first time, this edited collection, written by a cross-disciplinary group of leading social policy researchers, analyses the concepts and language used to make sense of contemporary social policy. The volume focuses on OECD countries located on four different continents: Asia, Australasia, Europe, and North America. Combining detailed chapters on particular countries with broader comparative chapters, the book strikes a rare balance between case studies and transnational perspectives. It will be of interest to academics and students in social policy, social work, political science, sociology, history, and public administration, as well as practitioners and policy makers.

By most accounts, Europe has been mired in a "demographic crisis" since about 1970. By a demographic crisis is meant that Europe's dependency ratio is increasing, and the net result has been declining populations and fewer workers to sustain society. However, there are certain issues that need attention. Two topics seem to capture some of these issues: The implications of the possible crisis, and the crisis' assessment. The present volume is organized around both topics (implications and assessment). There are at least three contributions being made by the proposed volume. To begin with, while there are other issues related to the demographic crisis in Europe the present volume should motivate additional research. Secondly, the research in the proposed volume does not necessarily assume that there is a demographic crisis in Europe nor that it is consistent across national lines. Thus, each chapter, in essence, examines a different issue associated with the proposal that there is a crisis. Finally, the present volume makes several methodological contributions. For example, the chapter by David Swanson uses non-Bayesian modeling in studying infant mortality. Richard Verdugo examines the dependency ratio and selected factors on economic growth in selected European nations, Kposowa and Ezzat conduct an assessment, Martins examines variation in the path toward a crisis, Johnson examines humanitarian migration and the crisis, Edmonston examines the association between geopolitics and the crisis.

Urgent Archives argues that archivists can and should do more to disrupt white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy beyond the standard liberal archival solutions of more diverse collecting and more inclusive description. Grounded in the emerging field of critical archival studies, this book uncovers how dominant western archival theories and practices are oppressive by design, while looking toward the the radical politics of community archives to envision new liberatory theories and practices. Based on more than a decade of ethnography at community archives sites including the South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA), the book explores how members of minoritized communities activate records to build solidarities across and within communities, trouble linear progress narratives, and disrupt cycles of oppression. Caswell explores the temporal, representational, and material aspects of liberatory memory work, arguing that archival disruptions in time and space should be neither about the past nor the future, but about the liberatory affects and effects of memory work in the present. Urgent Archives extends the theoretical range of critical archival studies and provides a new framework for archivists looking to transform their practices. The book should also be of interest to scholars of archival studies, museum studies, public history, memory studies, gender and ethnic studies and digital humanities.

Serving Refugee Children shows the struggles and traumatic experiences that unaccompanied and undocumented children undergo they seek safety in the United States and instead find imprisonment, separation from their families, and immigration enforcement raids. Current legislation and bureaucracy limit publication of first-person narratives from unaccompanied and undocumented children, but service providers and grassroots activists authoring the pieces in this collection bear witness to the children's brave human spirits in their search for safety in the United States. Through the power of storytelling, Serving Refugee Children exposes the many hardships unaccompanied and undocumented children endure, including current detention center conditions. No child should have to live the persecution suffered by children featured in these stories, nor should they have to embark upon perilous journeys across Latin America or be subjected to the difficult immigration court process unaided. Researchers and readers who believe that the emotional bonding of storytelling can humanize discussions and lead to immigration policies that foster a culture of engagement and interconnectedness will be interested in this volume.

This book focuses on the Biafran humanitarian crisis of 1967-1970 which generated a surge of human rights anxieties and attracted the attention of world humanitarian organizations. For the first time in recent history, different church groups and humanitarian activists around the world came together for the sole purpose of alleviating human suffering and saving lives regardless of theological differences, race, ethnic affiliation, nationality, and geographical distance. Despite their role in shaping the course and outcome of the conflict, most scholars of the Nigeria-Biafra War treat the humanitarian aspect of the war as a footnote, making it appear less important among other issues of interest in the conflict. Notable exceptions, however, include Joseph Thomson's American Policy and African Famine, which focuses on American policy on the humanitarian aid, and Reverend Tony Byrne's Airlift to Biafra. This study underlines that the international humanitarian aid largely contributed to the internationalization of the war. The efforts of the churches from thirty-three countries which remain virtually unexplored was not just the first of its kind in the developing world but also the largest civilian airlift in history. While the paucity of scholarship on the humanitarian aspect of the Biafra war could be attributed to the newness of this field of enquiry, the increase in conflicts in different parts of the world has just opened humanitarian aid studies as a new frontier in academic study. This book is a masterful example of scholarship in this newly emergent field.

Serving Refugee Children shows the struggles and traumatic experiences that unaccompanied and undocumented children undergo they seek safety in the United States and instead find imprisonment, separation from their families, and immigration enforcement raids. Current legislation and bureaucracy limit publication of first-person narratives from unaccompanied and undocumented children, but service providers and grassroots activists authoring the pieces in this collection bear witness to the children's brave human spirits in their search for safety in the United States. Through the power of storytelling, Serving Refugee Children exposes the many hardships unaccompanied and undocumented children endure, including current detention center conditions. No child should have to live the persecution suffered by children featured in these stories, nor should they have to embark upon perilous journeys across Latin America or be subjected to the difficult immigration court process unaided. Researchers and readers who believe that the emotional bonding of storytelling can humanize discussions and lead to immigration policies that foster a culture of engagement and interconnectedness will be interested in this volume.

Responding to the political and social policy changes made between 2010-2015 a wide-range of experts consider the relationship between the two coalition parties to provide a critical assessment of how their policies affected the British welfare state, including the impact of 'austerity'.

This ground-breaking study of the baby boomer generation, who are now entering old age, breaks new ground in ageing research. This post-war cohort has experienced a range of social, cultural, and medical changes in regard to their notions of body, from the introduction of the Pill and the decoupling of sex and procreation to the H-Bomb and Earthrise. Yet, paradoxically, ageing is also universal. This exciting book reflects the intersection of time, ageing, body and identity to give a more nuanced and enlightened understanding of the ageing process.

Dive inside this textbook for an accessible guide to the discipline of public services. Perfect for students, it offers a comprehensive account of core public service topics and explains the fundamental elements of working in the public services. Outlining their role in the welfare state, it explores the policies, providers and legalities shaping the context in which public services operate. Students will study concepts of organisational change, strategy, management, leadership and funding, and engage with timely discussions around contemporary public issues such as equality, sustainability and climate change. Key features to support student learning include: * objectives at the beginning of each chapter; * case studies and examples; * end of chapter summaries; * reflective questions; * further reading recommendations and resources. Bringing together authors with expertise in politics and public policy, social policy and law, this book is essential reading for everybody studying public services.

In this distinctive introduction Stephen Sinclair illuminates the subject of Social Policy by showing readers how Social Policy analysts think about welfare issues and policies. From what influences the decision to have children to how everyday terms such as 'youth crime' or 'poverty' reveal the structural processes shaping society, the book illustrates the insights which Social Policy analysis offers to understanding the social world and its problems. Written by an academic with extensive experience of teaching Social Policy analysis to new audiences, the book provides a stimulating introduction to the study of the factors and polices shaping wellbeing. Each chapter includes boxed summaries, applied examples illustrating key issues, and bullet points clarifying key concepts and theories.

A unique contribution to research on feminist care ethics. Drawing on a wealth of practical experience across eight different disciplinary fields, the international contributors demonstrate the significance of care ethics as a transformative way of thinking and highlight the necessity of thinking about the ethics of care within policies and practice.