Health and social care

Pushing forward new sociological theory, this book explores the theoretical and practical issues raised by ageing, and the associated problems of mental and physical frailty in later life.

Challenging the ethics of care as a tradeable commodity, this book introduces the concept of ailment as a framework for understanding social care. Providing examples from Britain and Finland, it demonstrates how ailment shapes all societies, and by addressing the marketisation of care, the authors bring to light increasing inequalities in care.

This collection of innovative approaches to social work placements offers hope in the current climate of cuts to services and over-regulation. The international contributions offer practical guidance and challenge conventional approaches to placement finding, teaching and assessment in field education.

This book examines key philosophical, ethical, legal and professional practice issues in the area of privacy and confidentiality and explores their implications for policy and practice.

Bringing together leading academics worldwide, this collection compares and critically examines the ways in which different countries are regulating healthcare in general, and health professions in particular, in the interest of users and the wider public.

The first digital-only ebook taster of Unequal health: The scandal of our times by Danny Dorling. It gives a flavour of one of the major themes: public health and contains three chapters from the book, preceded by a specially-written all-new introduction.

The government's NHS Plan emphasises the importance of services users' views. This report provides practical guidance on how to ensure that older people's views are heard, acted on, and monitored, in relation to service quality. It makes recommendations for ensuring that older people's views become an integral part of home care service provision.

The challenges faced by those rationing scarce health care resources have intensified recently. In an accessible style, this book tackles this challenge by exploring the latest thinking and practice on priority setting methods.

A multidisciplinary collection examining how cultural engagement can enhance resilience, reduce social isolation and help older people to thrive and overcome challenging life events and everyday problems associated with ageing.

This book's striking message is that palliative care does not deliver on its aims to value people who are dying and make death and dying a natural part of life. Applying Social Role Valorisation, it argues for the de-institutionalisation of palliative care and recommends an alternative framework to current approaches.

As the prospect of a legal right to advocacy inches closer, so the need to scrutinise its key values and practices becomes urgent. Although widely acclaimed as a 'good thing', there is little agreement as to how advocacy should be implemented, funded or evaluated. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the benefits of advocacy.