The Student's Companion to Social Policy, 5th Edition

This fully updated and expanded edition of the bestselling Student’s Companion to Social Policy charts the latest developments, research, challenges, and controversies in the field in a concise, authoritative format.

• Provides students with the analytical base from which to investigate and evaluate key concepts, perspectives, policies, and outcomes at national and international levels
• Features a new section on devolution and social policy in the UK; enhanced discussion of international and comparative issues; and new coverage of ‘nudge’-based policies, austerity politics, sustainable welfare, working age conditionality, social movements, policy learning and transfer, and social policy in the BRIC countries
• Offers essential information for anyone studying social policy, from undergraduates on introductory courses to those pursuing postgraduate or professional programmes
• Accompanied by updated online resources to support independent learning and skill development with chapter overviews, study questions, guides to key sources and career opportunities, a key term glossary, and more
• Written by a team of experts working at the forefront of social policy

Pete Alcock is Professor of Social Policy and Administration at the University of Birmingham, UK. He has been teaching and researching in social policy for forty years. From 2003-2008, he was Head of the School of Social Sciences at Birmingham, from 2008-2014 he was Director of the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC), and since 2013 he has been Director of the University’s ESRC Doctoral Training Centre. He is author and editor of a number of leading books on social policy including Social Policy in Britain (4^th edition, 2014), Welfare Theory and Development (4 volumes, 2011), International Social Policy: Welfare Regimes in the Developed World (2^nd edition, 2009), and Understanding Poverty (3^rd edition, 2006).His research has covered the fields of poverty and anti-poverty policy, social security, and the role of the UK third sector.

Tina Haux is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Kent, UK, and a member of the Qstep team at Kent. Her main research interests are family policy, welfare-to-work, social justice, evidence-based policy-making and, increasingly, longitudinal research methods. She is the author of the forthcoming book The Impact of Social Policy Scholars (2017).

Margaret May is Honorary Research Fellow in Social Policy and a member of the Centre for Household Asset and Savings Management (CHASM) at the University of Birmingham, UK. A past chair of the Social Policy Association, she has been teaching and researching in social policy for over thirty years and has edited and co-authored a number of leading books in the field, including Social Policy in Britain (fourth edition, 2014) and The Blackwell Dictionary of Social Policy (Blackwell, 2002). Her research interests include occupational and private welfare, employment policy, and human resource management.

Sharon Wright is Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Glasgow, Scotland, where she teaches social and public policy, specializing in the policy process; policy, politics and power; and work, welfare, and the politics of reform.  Her international research interests are in the lived experiences of poverty, social security, welfare reform, and the implementation of employment services at street-level.  She is co-editor of Understanding Inequality, Poverty and Wealth: Policies and Prospects (2008), and is currently conducting a major new study entitled ‘Welfare Conditionality:  Sanctions, Support, and Behaviour Change’.