Policy & Practice

Community participation is now demanded of virtually all public sector services and programmes. This handbook provides practitioners, community activists, regeneration managers, teachers and academics with the tools needed to ensure that it is effective.

A document of the results of road-testing two frameworks for assessing community participation: Active partners: Benchmarking community involvement in regeneration (Yorkshire Forward, 2000) and Auditing community participation: An assessment handbook (The Policy Press, 2000).

'Regeneration', 'mainstreaming', 'community involvement', 'evidence-based policy', 'public service reform' - terms central to the government's policy programme for tackling social deprivation. This report describes how an East London community organisation has worked to give these terms practical meaning through its Social Enterprise Zone project.

Any attempt by governments to stem the tide of early retirement will need to focus as much on employers' management of human resources as on the impacts of social policy. This report focuses on this previously neglected area: employers' policies and practice as a dynamic force in retirement decisions.

Working within the spirit of David Blunkett's visionary foreword to The learning age: A new renaissance for Britain, David H. Hargreaves' analysis challenges the myth that lifelong learning can or should be separated from school education. It asks what changes are needed for the culture and process of lifelong learning to become a reality?

This timely report examines the strategic changes that are occurring within learning disability services as a result of the 2001 Valuing People White Paper. It offers evidence-based examples of good practice for all those involved in planning strategic changes to, or implementing change within, services for people with learning disabilities.

This book evaluates the extensive and innovative range of housing services that have been developed for 16-17 year olds living in Newcastle. It provides vital indicators to other authorities and nominated RSLs of the approaches that they can take to increase successful tenancies and independent living among this age group.

Important reforms are taking place in children's services in the UK, with a move towards greater integration. In England, Scotland and Sweden, early childhood education and care, childcare for older children, and schools are now the responsibility of education departments. This book is the first to examine this major shift in policy.

This book analyses the current context and use of ICT in the public and voluntary sectors, building on this to provide practical guidance for managers and staff. Assuming no technical knowledge, the book provides ideas, tools and resources to think critically and creatively about current ICT practice and to implement positive change at all levels.

This report explores risk assessment and risk management for people being discharged from psychiatric hospital. It breaks new ground by asking service users about their views and experiences. It also includes information about the harm that service users experienced and explores the perspectives of mental health workers, relatives and friends.

Using new EU-wide data, this report shows very different patterns of poverty across Europe, depending on the benchmark used. The findings have important implications for the spatial distribution of poverty within and between countries (including the UK) and for the development of anti-poverty policy across the EU.

Drawing on interviews with older people, local authority care managers and direct payments support service workers, this topical report looks at how older people use direct payments and how they make them work.