Almost twenty years ago, conceptual work began in the United Kingdom on what was to become the international Looking After Children initiative. Looking After Children has had a profound influence on child welfare in Canada and some fifteen other countries, including the UK, Australia, Sweden, and Hungary. It has sharpened the developmental focus and improved the quality of services for children and adolescents who, because of abuse, neglect, extreme poverty, or other circumstances, live in...

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license.There has been an enormous increase in interest in the use of evidence for public policymaking, but the vast majority of work on the subject has failed to engage with the political nature of decision making and how this influences the ways in which evidence will be used (or misused) within political ar...

Social workers spend their time trying to ease social suffering. They encounter the extreme casualties of social inequality: the victims of poverty, illness, addiction, and abuse; they work with abusers and offenders; and operate in the space between the State and the poor or marginalized. Social work is replete with vivid human stories: the troubled teenage boy who cannot settle in a foster home; the frail older woman who is desperate for social contact; the community seeking a way to tac...

Welfare states vary across nations and change over time. And the balance between markets and government; free enterprise and social protection is perennially in question. But all developed societies have welfare states of one kind or another - they are a fundamental dimension of modern government. And even after decades of free-market criticism and reform, their core institutions have proven resilient and popular. This Very Short Introduction describes the modern welfare state, ex...

The aim of this book is to inspire a better politics: one that will enable future generations to be happier. Greater well-being and better health should be the goals, rather than wealth maximization. We need to value healthcare more than hedge funds, caring above careers, relationships more than real estate. The book is about what makes most of us happier, but it is also about the collective good. We cannot truly be happy if those around us are not happy. The evidence for a successful poli...

Today the United States has one of the highest poverty rates among the world's rich industrial democracies. The Failed Welfare Revolution shows us that things might have turned out differently. During the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers in three presidential administrations tried to replace the nation's existing welfare system with a revolutionary program to guarantee Americans basic economic security. Surprisingly from today's vantage point, guaranteed income plans received broad b...

The widespread condemnation of drastic price increases on life-saving drugs highlights our growing dependency on and vulnerability to international pharmaceutical conglomerates. However, aren’t the interests of the public supposed to supersede the pursuit of private profit?In his new work, Private Profits versus Public Policy, Joel Lexchin addresses this question as he examines how public policy with respect to the pharmaceutical industry has evolved in Canada over the pas...

The UK welfare state is under sustained ideological and political attack. It has also been undermined by accusations of paternalism and past failures to engage with the very people it is intended to help.This unique book is the first to critique the past, present and future welfare state from a participatory perspective. Peter Beresford, champion of user involvement, draws on pioneering theories and practice of welfare service user movements to offer a blueprint for a new participa...

Is it possible to overcome the enduring problem of child maltreatment?In Eradicating Child Maltreatment, leading international figures in the field of child welfare address this enduring and thorny question, setting out a public health approach to prevention. It draws on groundbreaking research and practice on prevention and early intervention from around the globe spanning health, social care, education and criminal justice. Contributors describe what is known about the incidence ...

From the author of The Veterans Survival Guide, The Veterans PTSD Handbook addresses the obstacles that veterans face when filing for benefits related to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). One of the greatest obstacles, John Roche writes, is establishing a connection between a veterans service and PTSD. Because both combat stressors and noncombat stressors can cause PTSD and because of the difficulties in diagnosing the condition, filing a successful claim for benefits based on PT...

Addressing the challenge of covering heath care expenses—while minimizing economic risks.Moral hazard—the tendency to change behavior when the cost of that behavior will be borne by others—is a particularly tricky question when considering health care. Kenneth J. Arrow's seminal 1963 paper on this topic (included in this volume) was one of the first to explore the implication of moral hazard for health care, and Amy Finkelstein—recognized as one of the world's fore...

Unique in its approach and in the variety of methods and data employed, this book is the first of its kind to provide an in-depth evaluation of the financial system of Thailand, a proto-typical Asian developing economy. Using a wealth of primary source qualitative and quantitative data, including survey data collected by the author, it evaluates the impact of specific financial institutions, markets for credit and insurance, and government policies on growth, inequality, and poverty at the...