Understanding Social Policy

The eighth edition of this successful textbook provides a student-friendly assessment of the key substantive areas of social policy and the context and processes which surround their development.

• Written to engage students across the health and social sciences as well as those studying social policy as a main subject
• Features a greater emphasis on key principles, themes, and issues, an overview of recent policy changes, broader coverage of the historical and global context, and new chapters on social care for adults and on education and children
• Uses case studies and other text box material to illustrate the contents of each chapter
• Provides an accessible introduction to key areas of policy while inviting readers to consider these in historical, social, and comparative context
• Investigates current constitutional changes and their potential impact upon social policy

The seventh edition of Michael Hill's Understanding Social Policy updates his successful text to take into account policy innovations since Labour came to power in 1997 and to reflect the many ways in which the debate about social policy is changing.

A website is now available to complement this text at www.blackwellpublishing.com/socialpolicy

• Investigates current constitutional changes, such as devolution and the changing central/local relationship and their potential impact upon social policy.
  
• Places UK social policy in the wider context of the European Union, both by looking at the relevance of EU policies and by comparing the UK with other EU members.
  
• Focuses upon employment policies as both policies to be seen as closely linked to social security ones and as an influence on welfare in general.
  
• Examines contemporary developments in pensions policy.
  
• Looks at the many links between health policy and other policies.
  
• Explores the implications of social divisions - class, gender and ethnicity - for social policy outcomes.

Michael Hill is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. He was previously Professor of Social Policy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. He is the author of numerous books on social policy and the study of policy processes.