Welfare & benefit systems

Contributing to debates on the unpredictability of middle-class attitudes and their changing relations with the welfare states in Europe, this book identifies key trends in the literature and considers the impact of recent welfare reforms on the middle class.

Providing original observations, this seminal text analyses the emergence of social investment policies in both Europe and East Asia. Experts explore the roads and barriers towards effective social investment policies, derive practical social policy implications and highlight important lessons for future social policymaking.

Focusing on three key areas: prevention, support and investment, this book argues that tackling poverty and financial insecurity through well-designed social security systems could offer a new focus for improving our collective mental health.

Based on in-depth interviews with over 80 precarious workers in Korea, this book introduces the concept of ‘melting labour’ and provides a real depiction of how workers lose control over their lives and experience precariousness in labour markets.

Anna Tarrant’s revealing research explores the dynamics and diversity of men’s caring roles in low-income households at various stages of their lives. It sheds light on men’s participation in care and the factors that affect it, including class, culture, work and the impact of austerity.

Experts from around the world review the complex and rapidly changing politics and policies of austerity in this comprehensive collection of essays. The book details the many different means and expressions of austerity since the financial crisis of 2008, as well as backlashes and emerging political alternatives.

This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK.

This book examines how interprofessional collaboration and service user participation are challenged in multi-agency meetings, demonstrating how collaborative and integrated welfare policy is contingent on the interactional practices of professionals and service users and providing examples of best practice.

The issue of Child Sexual Exploitation is firmly in the public spotlight, but how well is it understood? This much-needed book makes the case for a more thoughtful approach to CSE prevention and a greater use of different theoretical perspectives in the development and delivery of strategies and interventions.

Social Policy Review 16 is an excellent source of information and opinion about core aspects of contemporary social policy for students and academics alike. It will also appeal to all those with an interest in ‘welfare’ in the widest sense of the term.

Research into minimum income standards and reference budgets around the world is compared in this illuminating collection from leading academics in the field.

This book presents new empirical research about in-home child care in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, three countries where governments are pursuing new ways to support the recruitment of in-home childcare workers through funding, regulation and migration.