In 2024, following years of austerity, political instability and external shocks including Brexit, COVID-19 and the cost-of-living crisis, the Labour Party was voted into power in the UK. This book is the first in-depth analysis of the Labour government from a social policy perspective.Through expert chapters covering broad themes such as public expenditure, public opinion and devolution, and substantive areas including children and families, health, education, housing, social secu...

Social policy encompasses the study of social needs, policy development and administrative arrangements aimed at improving citizen wellbeing and redressing disadvantage. Australian Social Policy and the Human Services introduces readers to the mechanisms of policy development, implementation and evaluation. This third edition emphasises the complexity of practice, examining the links and gaps between policy development and implementation and encouraging readers to develop a critical approa...

Recent events such as the Brexit vote and the 2017 general election result highlight the erosion of traditional class identities and the decoupling of class from political identity. The majority of people in the UK still identify as working class, yet no political party today can confidently articulate their interests. So who is now working class and how do political parties gain their support?Based on the opinions and voices of lower and middle income voters, this insightful book ...

An inspiring manifesto offering a radical vision for our political future.We live in an age of crisis and decline. The right presents ‘solutions’ that only worsen the situation, driving a downward cycle in which desperation leads to despair. But the left is also to blame: progressive politicians have consistently failed to recognise both the urgency of people’s need and their receptiveness to new solutions.In Act now, a team of leading researchers presents ...

Austerity, a response to the aftermath of the financial crisis, continues to devastate contemporary Britain.In The Violence of Austerity, Vickie Cooper and David Whyte bring together the voices of campaigners and academics including Danny Dorling, Mary O'Hara and Rizwaan Sabir to show that rather than stimulating economic growth, austerity policies have led to a dismantling of the social systems that operated as a buffer against economic hardship, exposing austerity to be a form of...

A collection of stimulating essays exploring the wide-ranging debates surrounding the relationship between business and society in 21st century Ireland.Wide-ranging, diverse and thought-provoking contributions from leading business researchers, economists, sociologists and political scientists from Ireland and abroad probe five central themes: the making and unmaking of the Celtic Tiger; governance, regulation and justice; partnership and participation; the nature of Irish borders ...

Our sense of history shapes how we think about ourselves. One of the distinguishing features of the left in Britain is that it holds to a remorselessly bleak and miserabilist view of our recent political history -- one in which Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979 marked the start of a still-continuing fall from political grace made evident by the triumph of a free market get-what-you-can neoliberal ideology, dizzying levels of inequality, social decay, rampant individualism, state authori...

Adult social care in Britain has been at the centre of much media and public attention in recent years. Revelations of horrific abuse in learning disability settings, the collapse of major private care home providers, abject failures of inspection and regulation, and uncertainty over how long-term care of older people should be funded have all given rise to serious public concern. In this short form book, part of the Critical and Radical Debates in Social Work series, Iain Ferguson and Mic...

This book provides an account of the evolution of social security and employment policy and governance in Britain between 1973 and 2023. It explains how this remaking of policy and governance shaped, and was shaped by, the transformation of the labour market and power of claimants and workers.Advancing a class-centred explanation, the text situates contemporary working age active labour market policy as the contingent outcome of a long struggle over curtailment of labour autonomy a...

This edited collection examines the relevance of trade unions 100 years on from the 1913 Lockout in Dublin. The general argument underpinning the papers in this book is that trade unions are still relevant in the 21st century, since they provide an independent collective representation for workers and address the power imbalance between the worker and employer. All of the chapter authors are based at the Department of Personnel and Employment Relations, Kemmy Business School, University of...

By 2024 a majority of parents in the UK with three or more children were going hungry to feed their families. Children in the UK are becoming shorter and childhood mortality has been rising. What part does living with high inequality play in understanding how we have got to the point of peak injustice, when surely the situation cannot become worse?Although 2018 was a year of peak income and wealth inequality in the UK, absolute deprivation has continued to grow since then, especial...

Australian Workplace Relations explains the defining themes in workplace relations in the twenty-first century. It explores issues relating to employee voice, declining trade union membership, occupational health, disadvantaged workers and surveillance in the workplace. The treatment of each topic is placed in both a national and an international context. The book examines the effects on Australian workplace relations of globalisation, the changing international economy and the Global Fina...