Social Policy First Hand : An International Introduction to Participatory Social Welfare

Social policy is often constructed and implemented by people who have little experience of its impact as a service user, but there has been a growing interest in greater public, patient and service user involvement in social policy as both political activity and academic discipline.

Social Policy First Hand is the first comprehensive international social policy text from a participatory perspective and presents a new service user-led social policy that addresses the current challenges in welfare provision.

A companion volume to Peter Beresford’s bestselling All our welfare, it introduces the voices of different groups of service users, starting from their lived experience. With an impressive list of contributors, this important volume fills a gap in looking at social policy using participatory and inclusive approaches and the use of experiential knowledge in its construction. It will challenge traditional state and market-led approaches to welfare.

Michael Lavalette is a Professor in the Department of Social Work, Care and Justice at Liverpool Hope Univeristy. He has published widely on radical social work and contemporary social movements. He is co-editor of Critical and Radical Social Work journal.

Iain Ferguson is Honorary Professor of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of West Scotland and a founding member of the Social Work Action Network.

Nicola Yeates is Professor of Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy and Criminology at The Open University.

Dr Louca-Mai Brady is a Research Associate at Kingston University and St George’s Joint Faculty of Health, Social Care and Education and an independent research consultant. She has a long career in research with children and young people and her research interests include health and social care, disability and participative research methods.

Danny Dorling is Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Peter’s College. He is a patron of RoadPeace, Comprehensive Future and Heeley City Farm. He has published over 50 books, including the best-selling Peak Inequality: Britain’s Ticking Timebomb (2018) and Injustice: Why Social Inequality Still Persists (2014)..