This text provides students with [a] theoretical and conceptual framework for analyzing the design of a wide range of social welfare policies. [This book] illustrates theoretical points by offering examples from a cross-section of program areas includingincome maintenance, child welfare, model cities, day care, community action, and mental health. The authors show how social theories and individual versus collective value orientations influence policies. The [book] include[s] a broad overview of ... recent policy trends in the advanced welfare states related to eligibility, finance, delivery, and benefit designs.

Product Description: Increasing efficiency in generating national income and improving equity in its distribution among economic agents is at the forefront of priorities of most modern economies. This book presents a model which aims to maximize a symmetrical welfare function under certain constraints which consider both efficiency and equity, i...read more

Product Description: The Times They Are Changing? Crisis and the Welfare State presents a series of readings from international policy researchers that examine the effects of the recent financial crisis on welfare states around the world. Provides comprehensive and in depth coverage of changes in welfare states as a result of the financial crisis  Reveals how the financial crisis is changing our perception of the welfare states Features contributions from policy researchers and academics from around the world Â...read more

Product Description: In Well-Being and Fair Distribution: Beyond Cost-Benefit Analysis, author Matthew D. Adler provides readers with a comprehensive, philosophically grounded argument for the use of social welfare functions as a framework for governmental policy analysis--a framework that is welfarist but not utilitarian, and sensitive to the distribution of human well-being...read more

Product Description: Social Worker as Researcher

Provides a unique human rights and social justice framework to social work research.   This book is part of the Connecting Core Competencies Series. This series helps students understand and master CSWE’s core competencies with a variety of pedagogy highlighted competency content and critical thinking questions for the competencies throughout. Using an innovative approach, Social Worker as Researcher: Integrating Research with Advocacy, applies a human rights and social justice framework to social work research and evaluation as an essential tool for social work advocacy. It provides detailed coverage of the research and evaluation process from framing the problem, designing and implementing the study, and taking action with the results. It documents the history and contemporary methods of ‘who, what, where, and why we do’ as a means to understanding and eradicating individual and social problems and evaluating solutions.    The text is filled with material on critical thinking and evidence-based practice decision-making skills, vivid case examples, and experiential exercises to capture the thinking, feeling, and doing of research. It makes linkages to social work research and evaluation as a problem solving process and carefully documents the systematic step-by-step process of designing and implementing research for action.   Teaching & Learning Experience Improve Critical Thinking — The text encourages readers to take a reflective action-oriented approach to understanding problems and using research and evaluation. Engage Students — Real world social work research and evaluation examples, vivid case examples and experiental exercises help students relate theory to practice. Explore Current Issues — Up-to-date information on human rights and social justice issues is included. Apply CSWE Core Competencies — Integrates the 2008 CSWE EPAS throughout — highlights competencies and practice behaviors and includes expensive pedagogy. Support Instructors — An Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank, Computerized Test Bank (MyTest), BlackBoard Test Item File.  

Product Description: Contemporary Theorists for Medical Sociology explores the work of key social theorists and the application of their ideas to issues around health and illness. Encouraging students and researchers to use mainstream sociological thought to inform and deepen their knowledge and understanding of the many arenas of health and healthcare, this text discusses and critically reviews the work of several influential contemporary thinkers, including – Foucault, Bauman, Habermas, Luhmann, Bourdieu, Merleau-Ponty, Wallerstein, Archer, Deleuze, Guattari, and Castells...read more

Welfare is an important concept in the social sciences. It is also challenged and contested not only by alternative concepts but also as a political goal in itself. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this book takes a fresh look at the continuing relevance of welfare in the context of public policy, recent scholarly developments and changes in popular attitudes and behaviour. The book connects theory and practice. Tracing the concept's background in economics, political science and social policy, the book juxtaposes welfare with newer approaches, such as subjective well-being, capabilities, care, social exclusion and social capital. The links between welfare and political ideas are also elaborated. The welfare state, as it developed historically in Europe and as it is changing in different countries, is given an important place in the analysis. Drawing on a range of empirical work, the book in its final part considers how individuals and groups attain welfare and how this shapes people's decisions and actions in their everyday lives. Written in a lively style, the book provides students of sociology, social policy and political science with a valuable point of access to a range of debates and thinking in the field of welfare and related concepts.

Product Description: Using student-friendly features such as case studies and a glossary, this textbook provides an introduction to the concept of agency and how it can usefully inform social welfare practice. It considers how agency and power inter-relate and how it can inform new ways of thinking about the individual and society...read more

Product Description: This book explores an important, emergent issue: what types of reforms are required to enable welfare states to preserve sustainability? For the purpose of this study, a sustainable welfare state is one that can remain the guarantor against social risks and adverse economic trends for all segments of their respective societies and satisfy sound fiscal criteria (such as the Maastricht requirement for all members of the EMU that their fiscal budget deficit does not exceed 3% of the GDP), without imposing considerable financial burdens on future generations...read more

Product Description: Contentious issues such as civil liberties and abortion touch on people's deeply held beliefs. This series captures the passion and depth of these debates, examining how the courts have helped to shape each issue through their rulings...read more

Product Description: Contemporary social policy has never been more vigorously contested. Issues range from single-issue campaigns over housing, social care, hospital closures through to organised movements around disability, environment, health and education...read more

Product Description: A central theme of this lively and accessible text is that theory helps us to understand policy, politics and practice. The book combines an in-depth exploration of selected theoretical perspectives and concepts with the student-friendly format of the Understanding Welfare series...read more

Product Description: Research on well-being reveals the significance of personal relationships, trust and participation to sustain quality of life, yet it is the economic model that remains the dominant basis for political and social institutions and policy...read more

Product Description: Volumes in the Information Plus Reference Series are completely revised and updated every two years.

Product Description: When I was Dickinson Miller's assistant from 1940 to 1942, I soon realized that I had encountered an unusually powerful, acute, and original mind and a writer whose clear but vivid style matched the high quality of his intelligence...read more