"The best way of handling the question of how much to give the poor, politicians have discovered, is to avoid doing anything about it at all," note Paul Peterson and Mark Rom. The issue of the minimum people need in order to live decently is so difficult that Congress has left this crucial question to the states --even though the federal government foots three-fourths of the bill for about 15 million Americans who receive cash and food stamp benefits.

The states differ widely in their assessment of what a family needs to meet a reasonable standard of living, and the interstate differences in welfare benefits cannot be explained by variations in wage levels or costs of living. The states with higher welfare benefits act as magnets by attracting or retaining poor people. In the competition to avoid becoming welfare havens, states have cut welfare benefits in real dollars by more than one-third since 1970. The authors propose the establishment of a minimum federal welfare standard, which would both reduce the interstate variation in welfare benefits and stem their overall decline.

Peterson and Rom develop their argument in four steps. First they show how the politics of welfare magnets works in a case study of policymaking in Wisconsin. Second, they present their analysis of the overall magnet effect in American state politics, finding evidence that states with high welfare benefits experiencing disproportionate growth in their poverty rates make deeper welfare cuts. Third, they describe the process by which the current system came into being, identifying the reform efforts and political crises that have contributed to the centralization of welfare policy as well as the regional, partisan, and group interests that have resisted these changes. Finally, the authors propose a practical step that can go a long way toward achieving a national welfare standard; then assess it's cost, benefits, and political feasibility.

Until Masculine Interests not much had been written about men "as men" in the cinema. Now Robert Lang considers how Hollywood articulates the eroticism that is intrinsic to identification between men. He considers masculinity in social and psychoanalytic terms, maintaining that a major function of the movies is to define different types of masculinity, and to either valorize or criticize these forms. Focusing on several films -- primarily The Lion King, The Most Dangerous Game, The Outlaw, Kiss Me Deadly, Midnight Cowboy, Innerspace, My Own Private Idaho, the Batman series, and Jerry Maguire -- Lang questions the way in which American culture distinguishes between homosexual and nonhomosexual forms of male bonding. In arguing for a much more complex recognition of the homosocial continuum, he contends that queer sexuality is far more present in American cinema than is usually acknowledged.

Until Masculine Interests not much had been written about men "as men" in the cinema. Now Robert Lang considers how Hollywood articulates the eroticism that is intrinsic to identification between men. He considers masculinity in social and psychoanalytic terms, maintaining that a major function of the movies is to define different types of masculinity, and to either valorize or criticize these forms. Focusing on several films -- primarily The Lion King, The Most Dangerous Game, The Outlaw, Kiss Me Deadly, Midnight Cowboy, Innerspace, My Own Private Idaho, the Batman series, and Jerry Maguire -- Lang questions the way in which American culture distinguishes between homosexual and nonhomosexual forms of male bonding. In arguing for a much more complex recognition of the homosocial continuum, he contends that queer sexuality is far more present in American cinema than is usually acknowledged.

For over three decades, the capability approach proposed and developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has had a distinct impact on development theories and approaches because it goes beyond an economic conception of development and engages with the normative aspects of development. This book explores the new frontiers of the capability approach and its links to human development in three main areas. First, it delves into the philosophical foundations of the approach, re-examining its links to concepts of common good, collective agency and epistemic diversity. Secondly, it addresses its 'operational frontier', aiming to give inclusive explanations of some of the most advanced methods available for capability researchers. Thirdly, it offers a wide range of the applications of this approach, as carried out by a mix of renowned capability scholars and researchers from different disciplines. This broad interdisciplinary range includes the areas of human and sustainable development, inequalities, labour markets, education, special needs, cities, urban planning, housing, social capital and happiness studies, among others.

Restorative practice is an innovative approach to thinking about, and addressing, conflict and bullying, as well as disruptive, challenging and criminal behaviour. The approach is increasingly used to transform the culture of organisations, institutions and services and the way people communicate with one another. In this book, ten practitioners describe a restorative encounter as seen through the lens of their own theoretical model. The book's unique structure is modelled on a restorative practice known as Circle Time- comprising of a Check-in, a Main Activity, and a Check-out. In the Check-in the practitioner explains how their own theoretical model informs their practice; in the Main Activity they comment on the same case studies to highlight how each theory can deepen our understanding of what might be happening and why; and in the Check-out they reflect on what they have learned from reading each other's contributions. This is a unique exemplar of how restorative theory and practice can influence how practitioners think, learn and write about restorative practice. This will be an invaluable resource for restorative practitioners working across sectors including education, social services, youth offending or policy.

The modern welfare state is indeed one of the greatest achievements of the post-war 20th century. With its key aims of eradicating the five giant social ills of Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness, it aimed to providing a minimum standard of living, with all people of working age paying a weekly contribution; in return, benefits would be paid to anyone who was sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. The modern welfare state, therefore, is about maintaining a delicate equilibrium between dependent social groups on the one hand and the active working classes on the other. In the case of old-age security, this balance is being achieved (or not) by the so-called Generation Contract. This social pact is more of an implicit, unwritten and unspecified social contract. This ground-breaking book demonstrates how countries are addressing population-ageing challenges in depth, using the case study of Austria to gain the required complexity and differentiation in a comparative European framework of empirical evidence. This is a broad social science study in political economy and sociology, not an economic analysis. Though focusing on pensions, it centres on the (im)balance between work and non-work, issues of health, work ability, employability, and benefit receipt from old-age security to disability allowance. It will be required reading for all sociologists and social policy experts and academics working within this area.

This authoritative report by NCB and NCVO provides a comprehensive analysis of the children and young people's voluntary sector in England. Using a combination of quantitative analysis of Charity Commission data, qualitative interviews with commissioners and practitioners, and a summary of the existing literature on the sector, The Ripple Effect provides an insight into the make-up and work of the sector, the relationship between the sector and government and the difference the sector makes to the lives of children and families across the country.

For more than four decades, free market economists and right-wing politicians have touted Hong Kong as a model of capitalism and a market economy success story. Social Security Policy in Hong Kong: From British Colony to Special Administrative Region of China, by Chak Kwan Chan, argues that Hong Kong's capitalism is not the result of democratic choice but the consequence of an administrative-led polity that has had suppressed democracy, limited trade unions' activities, and manipulated traditional Chinese welfare ideologies to maintain a small government. Social Security Policy in Hong Kong is the first book that systematically analyzes the dynamic relationships between Hong Kong's polity, Chinese welfare ideologies, and social security provisions from British colonial rule to China's special administrative region.

The needs of parents and carers of children on the autism spectrum are not met by conventional parenting strategies. This resource for trainers and facilitators offers the best available knowledge and theories to help them develop an understanding of how their child perceives the world and ultimately improve their family life. The manual is divided into ten sessions that introduce a topic related to autism and Asperger Syndrome, for example, 'mindblindness' and the social world, and strategies to manage individual behaviour. During each session parents are introduced to a new topic and are invited to participate in exercises and group discussions that serve to reinforce the key messages discussed earlier. Each session closes with recommended reading and 'homework'. This manual is a valuable resource for professionals working with parents of children and young people with autism and Asperger Syndrome and is an effective complement to How to Live with Autism and Asperger Syndrome: Practical Strategies for Parents and Professionals published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers, which is referenced throughout the resource.

From the almshouses of seventeenth-century Puritans to the massive housing projects of the mid-twentieth century, the struggle over housing assistance in the United States has exposed a deep-seated ambivalence about the place of the urban poor. Lawrence J. Vale's groundbreaking book is both a comprehensive institutional history of public housing in Boston and a broader examination of the nature and extent of public obligation to house socially and economically marginal Americans during the past 350 years.

First, Vale highlights startling continuities both in the way housing assistance has been delivered to the American poor and in the policies used to reward the nonpoor. He traces the stormy history of the Boston Housing Authority, a saga of entrenched patronage and virulent racism tempered, and partially overcome, by the efforts of unyielding reformers. He explores the birth of public housing as a program intended to reward the upwardly mobile working poor, details its painful transformation into a system designed to cope with society's least advantaged, and questions current policy efforts aimed at returning to a system of rewards for responsible members of the working class. The troubled story of Boston public housing exposes the mixed motives and ideological complexity that have long characterized housing in America, from the Puritans to the projects.

This pioneering work addresses a key issue that confronts all industrialised nations: How do we organise healthcare services in accordance with fundamental human rights, whilst competing with scientific and technological advances, powerful commercial interests and widespread public ignorance? "The Nature of Health" presents a coherent, affordable and logical way to build a healthcare system. It argues against a health system fixated on the pursuit of longevity and suggests an alternative where the ability of an individual to function in worthwhile relationships is a better, more human goal. By reviewing the etymology, sociology and anthropology of health, this controversial guide examines the meaning of health, and proves how a community-centred healthcare system improves local economy, creates social capital and is affordable, rational, personal, and just. "This is badly needed nourishment for a medical system glutted on technology, individualism, profit and the pursuit of longevity. Read and be fed." - Christopher Koller, Health Insurance Commissioner, The State of Rhode Island, USA. "Unique. Surprising. A real eye-opener. Just about everyone who doesn't have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo will agree that U.S. healthcare is badly broken. [This book] is making it possible for us to refocus from how to provide healthcare to how to achieve health. Their description of health as successful functioning in community, rather than as a measure of longevity is a definition that can make a reader feel healthier as they take gradually appreciate the power of the concept. On this foundation, it is not as hard as one might think to outline a healthcare system that is equitable, affordable and achievable." - Alexander Blount EdD, Professor of Family Medicine, University of Massacusetts Medical Center.

Bringing together a discussion of the theories and techniques of comparative policy analysis and a description of current developments in selected welfare state regimes, European Welfare States provides an accessible overview of issues concerning European welfare states.

In particular, it provides:

- an overview of the development of welfare states in Europe;

- a discussion of key issues including welfare state theories, the role of globalization, gender and the welfare state; welfare typologies; and the role of public opinion;

- a detailed account of recent developments and current challenges in five European welfare states; and

- a detailed account of the key challenges facing European welfare states and possible future directions for welfare models including the role of the European Union in the development of social policy.

This book is illustrated throughout with student-friendly features such as case-studies, chapter summaries, questions for discussion and guides for further reading. With a flowing narrative and clear structure the book is an invaluable text for undergraduates taking courses in comparative social policy. It will also be useful for students in related disciplines such as public policy, social welfare, politics and international relations.

`Whose view counts when we decide what "support" to offer or what qualifies as "success"? What kind of support do parents prefer? And can we assume that all parents, by virtue of parents, want the same kind of support? These important questions are discussed in Supporting Parents: Messages from Research. Author David Quinton is professor of psychosocial development at Bristol university's school for policy studies. His report reviews the results of 14 very different research projects selected in 1994 as part of the then government's contribution to International Year of the Family. This penetrating overview which explores and analyses the over-arching themes and outcomes concerning the nature and experience of support that is evident from these diverse projects.' * Zero to Nineteen * How can agencies mobilize the best support for parents and carers as a vital part of the Children's National Service Framework? * What kinds of support do parents and carers themselves say they find most effective? * What do parents who have difficulties seem to lack in the way of support? * What exactly do we mean by `support' and `parenting'? Supporting Parents brings together authoritative research on supporting parents and carers. Underpinning the government's developing policy for children's services, it is essential reading for practitioners, policy makers and academics working in child care. Professor David Quinton, a nationally recognized authority in the field of parenting and child development, summarizes the key findings of an innovative government-funded series of research studies. The studies explored subjects as diverse as parenting in poverty, disabled parents and children, step-parenting, teenage parents, imprisoned fathers, and parents who reject their children. Drawing out the key messages for practice and policy, this accessible overview shows how `informal' support can be complemented by the provision of a fully integrated multi-agency response from health care, education and social services. This important book should be read by all those professionals working with children and their families, including social workers, teachers, GPs and health visitors.

While clearing through her mother's bedroom after her death, Emma comes across a thirty-year-old newspaper clipping that her mother had kept, announcing the arrival of a new baby boy. Realizing that the baby must be the son she gave up for adoption, Emma becomes transfixed by this link to her first-born. But she now has a husband and two teenage children, all of whom know nothing of her past... Vividly recalling the stigma of her schoolgirl pregnancy and the pain of her separation from the baby, this absorbing and illuminating story follows Emma's search, years later, for Oliver, her adopted son.

This book examines the processes and relationships that underpin the delivery of new homes across the United Kingdom. Its focus, however, is primarily on the land use planning system in England, the way that housing providers engage with that system, and how the processes of engagement are changing or might change in the future.

With a unique focus on the effects of poverty on parenting in Britain, this book explores what professionals and policy makers can do to support families living in poverty. The authors examine community-level poverty and its relationship to family and individual problems such as low income, poor mental health and child behavioural difficulties. Using data from the first nationally representative survey of parents living in especially poor circumstances, they assess the wider help parents receive, both through formal support services and through informal networks of family and friends. Drawing on a study of 1750 parents by the Policy Research Bureau for Department of Health, this book shows what service-users think of the resources available to them and how policy and practice in family support services could be improved.

Use this important intervention to improve your practice with substance-using youths and their families!This vital book gives you a detailed review of a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded, long-term clinical trial of the Family Empowerment Intervention (FEI). The subjects are youths who have been arrested and processed at the Hillsborough County Juvenile Assessment Center and their families. With information on the conceptual foundations and clinical practices of the intervention and an examination of its one-year and longer-term impact on these youths' recidivism and psychosocial functioning, Family Empowerment Intervention: An Innovative Service for High-Risk Youth and Their Families will help you provide better services to these difficult-to-serve clients.Bringing you up-to-date on all aspects of this unique intervention, this book: examines the pressing need for this kind of intervention gives you an essential overview of the FEI describes the selection process for subject involvement in the project and the methods of data collection used examines the FEI's impact on crime as well as its short- and long-term impact on and drug and alcohol use suggests ways to improve the FEIComplete with dozens of easy-to-understand tables and figures as well as five helpful appendixes, this well-referenced volume is essential reading for anyone working with this highly volatile population. Make it a part of your collection today!

The welfare system in the United Kingdom is broken. The number of claims has escalated and so, in consequence, have welfare expenditures. The social system does not encourage welfare recipients to become independent. Half the population of the United Kingdom lives in households drawing one of the major means-tested benefits. Research documents that means-tests paralyze self-help, discourage self--im-provement, and tax honesty while at the same time rewarding claimants for being either inactive or -deceitful. In Making Welfare Work, Frank Field challenges the current political orthodoxy, particularly its emphasis on the role of legislation alone in bringing about social improvement in a welfare state. Field argues that the impact legislation has on personal character is pivotal to human advance in a welfare state. Welfare reconstruction needs to address and channel the differing roles of self-interest, self-improvement, and altruism, which are among the great driving forces in human character. A successful welfare state must reinforce these important forces which influence our nature because to create an imbalance between these three motive forces will always undermine welfare's objectives. Field discusses in detail aspects of modern British society in dire need of change. These include the drug trade, benefit traps, permanent adolescence, the rise of part-time work, inequality in incomes, excluding the disabled, single parents, and the very elderly, for example. This clearly delineated, well-researched blueprint for success will be important reading for politicians and policymakers in all industrialized nations. Its author is well-positioned to revise and review the welfare policies of democratic -societies.

The fully revised and updated edition of this bestselling collection combines academic research with professional and personal reflections. Death, Dying and Bereavement addresses both the practical and the more metaphysical aspects of death. Topics such as new methods of pain relief, guidelines for breaking bad news, and current attitudes to euthanasia are considered, while the mystery of death and its wider implications are also explored. A highly distinctive interdisciplinary approach is adopted, including perspectives from literature, theology, sociology and psychology. There are wide-ranging contributions from those who come into professional contact with death and bereavement - doctors, nurses, social workers and councellors. In addition there are more intimate personal accounts from carers and from bereaved people. Death, Dying and Bereavement is the Course Reader for The Open University course Death and Dying, which is offered as part of The Open University Dilpoma in Health and Social Welfare. Some reviews of the First Edition: `The book does give a broad overview of many of the issues around death, dying and bereavement. It raises the reader's awareness and encourages deeper investigation at every level. It is easy to reda and therefore accessible to a wide audience' - Changes `Provides a richly woven tapestry of personal, professional and literary accounts of death, dying and bereavement' - Health Psychology Update `Offers a unique collection of fascinating information, research, stories, poems and personal reflections. It is unusual to experience such a diversity of writings in one book' - Nursing Times `It brings together the knowledge and skills from a multi-occupational group and thereby offers and opportunity, to whoever reads it, to enable better experiences for those who are dying and bereaved' - Journal of Interprofessional Care `For those trying to help the dying and bereaved, this volume will inspire and move you as much as it will inform and guide your work' - Bereavement Care `Provides a unique overview, and in many areas, penetrating insights into various aspects of death, dying and bereavement. One of it's major strengths is that it brings together a wide and varied discourse on death across cultures and through time' - British Journal of Sociology

This innovative volume describes how an awareness of culture must be applied to the study and provision of welfare in Europe. It shows how the cultures underpinning social welfare systems are starting to be exposed and explored. The assumption that the values and beliefs which constitute welfare systems are universal and absolute has been overturned for two reasons. First, the post-war period has seen huge changes in traditional structures in Europe, such as class, race and gender, which have prompted people and systems to re-assess and assert their identity and role. Second, the move towards European union and the process of globalization have led to a growing awareness of different welfare systems; traditional distinctions, for example between the individual and the community, the public and private spheres, and the state and the market, have had to be re-evaluated. Defining `culture' as the systems through which social orders are transmitted, experienced and explored, Welfare and Culture in Europe argues that welfare must start with the human individuals involved - the users, providers and policy makers themselves. It constitutes a major qualitative study of the ways in which welfare states reflect and reproduce patterns of social values. Several chapters draw on new biographical approaches to social policy research and analysis. It develops new directions for future policy research and presents alternative methodological bases for empirical work. At a time of crisis, change and anxiety in Europe, this book lays the foundation for an essential re-working of social policy.

With about one half of all marriages ending in divorce today, it is safe to say that nearly everyone will be or has been affected by divorce in some way. For many, it does not mean the end to a family. Focusing on the consequences of divorce for children, The Postdivorce Family examines the stressors that divorce can create; adjustment problems among children of divorce; the issue of resilience for children; and individual differences in the psychological adjustment to divorce. The authors also examine the parents? responsibilities after divorce, including custody issues, child support orders, and nonresidential parenting. This book concludes with a section that explores the effects of a high divorce rate in society, including how the prevalence of divorce has changed the family form and structural factors that have contributed to various social problems. With this volume, the authors hope to incite analysis and reflection of the issues surrounding divorce and their implications for public policy. This book integrates the empirical research and policy perspectives of several scholars in various disciplines including psychology, sociology, human development, law, and social work.

The welfare state has been one of the most significant developments in twentieth-century Britain. Drawing on much recent research, The Twentieth-Century Welfare State narrates its principal changes and provides a thematic historical introduction to issues of finance and funding, providers and users and the role of the welfare state as a system of social stratification. Change and continuity are central themes, while the 'moving frontier' between the state and other suppliers in the mixed economy of twentieth-century welfare is also analysed.

Combining academic housing specialists, researchers for non-profit housing organizations, and housing practitioners, this collection emanated from a Fannie Mae Office of Housing Research roundtable series led by Belden and Wiener. It explores decent and affordable shelter in rural areas, an often-overlooked issue in housing policy. Rural poor and their housing conditions are not widely discussed or examined within professional literature because most housing policymakers, administrators, researchers, and advocates live in cities and take an urban-centric view, what some rural critics have called "metropolyanna." Following an introductory chapter which defines "rural" and describes the state of rural housing and poverty in the United States, chapters cover a broad spectrum of housing need, innovative strategies, and practitioners' approaches in rural America. Contributors examine current conditions of rural housing, look at some solutions to problems associated with rural housing, and suggest innovations for the future.

The problems of substance abuse affect not only the abuser but the people involved in his or her life. Family members and significant others often confront therapists, requesting recommendations on how they can contribute to the abusers recovery. The traditional attitude of therapists has been that the substance abuser cannot be helped until he or she is motivated. Therefore, significant others have typically been given little advice or guidance. Family Recovery offers clinicians a structured, research-based approach to working with significant others involved with substance abusers. Unilateral family therapy offers methods for therapists to improve the well-being of concerned significant others of substance abusers and to teach them how to restructure their relationship to the abuser in ways that may enhance the substance abuser's motivation to change. Family Recovery will be useful to both experienced clinicians and those who are training to be clinical social workers, clinical psychologists, family therapists, and substance abuse counselors.

Mentally ill people turned out of institutions, crack-cocaine use on the rise, more poverty, public housing a shambles: as attempts to explain homelessness multiply so do the homeless-and we still don't know why. The first full-scale economic analysis of homelessness, Making Room provides answers quite unlike those offered so far by sociologists and pundits. It is a story about markets, not about the bad habits or pathology of individuals. One perplexing fact is that, though homelessness in the past occurred during economic depressions, the current wave started in the 1980s, a time of relative prosperity. As Brendan O'Flaherty points out, this trend has been accompanied by others just as unexpected: rising rents for poor people and continued housing abandonment. These are among the many disconcerting facts that O'Flaherty collected and analyzed in order to account for the new homelessness. Focused on six cities (New York, Newark, Chicago, Toronto, London, and Hamburg), his studies also document the differing rates of homelessness in North America and Europe, and from one city to the next, as well as interesting changes in the composition of homeless populations. For the first time, too, a scholarly observer makes a useful distinction between the homeless people we encounter on the streets every day and those "officially" counted as homeless. O'Flaherty shows that the conflicting observations begin to make sense when we see the new homelessness as a response to changes in the housing market, linked to a widening gap in the incomes of rich and poor. The resulting shrinkage in the size of the middle class has meant fewer hand-me-downs for the poor and higher rents for the low-quality housing that is available. O'Flaherty's tightly argued theory, along with the wealth of new data he introduces, will put the study of homelessness on an entirely new plane. No future student or policymaker will be able to ignore the economic factors presented so convincingly in this plainspoken book.