Research

Teenage parenthood is recognised as a significant disadvantage in western industrialised nations. It has been found to increase the likelihood of poverty and reinforce inequalities. This book explores the links between welfare state provision and teenage reproductive behaviour across a range of countries with differing welfare regimes.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the EU Social Inclusion Process and explores the challenges ahead at local, regional, national and EU levels.

How welfare states influence population health has long been debated but less well tested by research. This book presents new evidence of the effects of Swedish welfare state on the lives of citizens. The analysis and theoretical approaches developed in the book have wide implications for health research and policy beyond Scandinavia.

Welfare reform is a central part of the modernisation programme adopted by the Labour Government since 1997. This book examines the role of Parliament in the formulation and scrutiny of welfare policy, focusing in particular on how MPs and Peers view their influence on policy.

Ethics has been addressed in health care, but relatively little attention has been paid to the subject in the social care sector. This book redresses the balance by examining theory, research, policy and practice in both fields. The importance of this approach is reflected in the growing emphasis on ethical issues in research and practice.

This book uses historical and contemporary materials to document the ways in which policy-makers, in different eras, have sought to use state powers and regulations to create better, more balanced, and sustainable communities and citizens. 

This book offers a critical examination of both the discourse and practice of participation in order to understand the significance of this explosion in participatory forums, and the extent to which such practices represent a fundamental change in governance.

This book addresses the development of increasingly individualised public social services in the EU. It focuses particularly on activation services that have become crucial in the 'modernisation' of welfare states, comparing their introduction in the UK, Germany, Italy, Finland and the Czech Republic.

There is widespread commitment across public service agencies in the UK and elsewhere to ensuring that the best available evidence is used to improve public services. The challenge is not only making research evidence accessible and available but also getting it used. This book provides a timely contribution to enhancing evidence use.

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.

This study, by a qualitative sociologist, uses interpretive methods to examine the impact of auditing and inspection on professional work in schools, hospitals, local government and the police and provides a true sense of what is practically involved in the work of counting, measuring and managing quality.

This important book brings together some of the best known international scholars working within a critical gerontology perspective to review and update our understanding of how the field has developed over and provide a challenging assessment of the complex practical and ethical issues facing older people, and those who conduct research on ageing.