Family policy

This book explores the policy and practice possibilities offered by a social model of child protection. Drawing on developments in mental health and disability studies, it examines the conceptual, political and practice implications of this new framework.

In this book, researcher Matthew Gibson reviews the role of shame and pride in social work, providing invaluable new insights from the first study undertaken into the role of these emotions within professional practice.

Drawing on access to prominent policy makers, Purcell examines the origins and impact of children’s services reform under recent Labour and Conservative-led governments, including Labour’s Every Child Matters programme and the Munro Review. He also reassesses the impact of high-profile child abuse cases, including Victoria Climbié and Baby P.

Naomi Eisenstadt and Carey Oppenheim explore the radical changes in public attitudes and public policy concerning parents and parenting, arguing that a more joined-up approach is needed to improve outcomes for children: both reducing child poverty and improving parental capacity by providing better support systems.

This book examines how pathologising ideas of failing, chaotic and dysfunctional families create a powerful consensus that Britain is in the grip of a ‘parent crisis’ and are used to justify increasingly punitive state policies.

This volume provides an international perspective on parental leave policies in different countries, goes beyond this to examine a range of issues in depth, and aims to stimulate thinking about possible futures and how policy might underpin them.

The book shows how children are affected by conflict, explores why they respond to conflict in different ways, and provides clear, practical guidance on the best ways to ameliorate the effects.

This report provides a detailed understanding of employers' motivations for offering flexible working and the outcomes of different policies and practices for both employers and employees.

Using Sweden as a case study, this book combines theories of family practices, care and childhood studies with the personal perspectives of nannies, au pairs, parents and children to provide new understandings of what constitutes care in nanny families.

This book is the first to evaluate the recent reforms of UK legal aid from a social policy perspective and assess their impact on family law courts and advocacy. It argues that the reforms effectively ‘delawyerise’ disputes, producing a more inquisitorial justice system and impacting the litigants, court system, staff and process.

This book provides innovative views in the multidisciplinary research field of intergenerational family relations in society, with a focus on Europe. Different, but complementary, perspectives are integrated in one volume bringing together international scholars from sociology, psychology and economics.

In the UK, as in other rich countries, the ‘playing-field’ is anything but level and the family plays a surprisingly crucial part in maintaining inequality. This book explores how seemingly mundane aspects of family life raise fundamental questions of social justice and calls for a rethink of what equality of opportunity means.