This book explores the issue of social exclusion. It asks three main questions: How can social exclusion be measured? What are its main determinants or influences? And what policies can reduce social exclusion? The authors aim to consider how a focus on social exclusion may alter the policy questions that are most relevant by fostering debate in government, research, and academic circles.

First published in 1989, The Goals of Social Policy is an invaluable text that will give students an admirable introduction to the central concerns of the study of social policy. It asks what have been the traditional concerns of social policy as a subject of academic study, and what its context should be in the changed political environment of twenty-first century. Three issues receive close attention for their future implications: social policy and the family (focusing on gender), social policy and community (including race and public order issues) and social policy and the economy. Retrospective chapters examine the relationship between social policy and social research, social theory and social work. The book will appeal particularly to students of social policy, social work, sociology and political science, as well as to those in applied fields such as criminology, health studies, education and women's studies with interests in social policy. It will also appeal to the general reader interested in keeping abreast of the latest thinking about social policy.

Social policy is now central to political debate in Britain. What has been achieved by efforts to improve services and reduce poverty? What is needed to deliver more effective and popular services to all and increase social justice? How can we make social policy work? These are some of the questions discussed in this new and wide-ranging collection of essays by a distinguished panel of leading social policy academics. The book covers key issues in contemporary social policy, particularly concentrating on recent changes. It examines the history and goals of social policy as well as its delivery, focusing in turn on the family and the state, schools, higher education, healthcare, social care, communities and housing. Redistribution is also examined, exploring child poverty, pension reform and resources for welfare. The essays in this collection have been specially written to honour the 70th birthday of Howard Glennerster whose pioneering work has been concerned not only with the theoretical, historical and political foundations of social policies but, crucially, with how they work in practice. It is a collection of primary importance for those working in and interested in policy and politics in a wide variety of fields and for students of social policy, public policy and the public sector.

This book explores the issue of social exclusion. It asks three main questions: How can social exclusion be measured? What are its main determinants or influences? And what policies can reduce social exclusion? The authors, who include most of the UK's leading researchers in the field, aim to consider how a focus on social exclusion may alter the policy questions that are most relevant by fostering debate in government, research, and academic circles.