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At Home with Autism introduces readers to conditions and aspirations of adults on the autism spectrum that demand a new approach to how we provide, locate, design and develop homes in which they live. The book argues that there is no singular stellar residential model, just as there is no singular prototype of autism. Grounded in an extensive array of research sources, the book identifies resident-focused quality of life goals, and profiles design guidelines directed to those goals. The book implores those involved in housing design, production and policy to expand their exposure to what is possible, what is desirable, and to direct their efforts towards expanding residential choices for those on the spectrum.

Recent social trends and policy developments have called into question the divide between the provision of income support and social care services. This book examines this in light of key trends. It presents new evidence on the links between cash – whether from earnings from paid work, social security benefits, and payments for disabled people and carers – and social disadvantage, care, and disability. The book also presents theoretical perspectives on the need for and provision of care, which some commentators have described as a ‘new social risk’, and offers new insights into traditional forms of risk, such as poverty, disability, access to credit, and money management. It provides an analysis of childcare and informal support for sick, disabled, or elderly people in the context of increasing female labour market participation and the introduction of cash allowances to pay for care, and posits a new look at both disabled people and older people in their roles as active citizens, whose views and experiences should help shape both policy and practice.

While ethics has been addressed in the health care literature, relatively little attention has been paid to the subject in the field of social care. This book redresses the balance by examining theory, research, policy, and practice in both fields. The analysis is set within the context of contemporary challenges facing health and social care, not only in Britain but internationally. Contributors from the United Kingdom, United States, and Australia consider ethical issues in health and social care research and governance; inter-professional and user perspectives; ethics in relation to human rights, the law, finance, management, and provision; key issues of relevance to vulnerable groups such as children and young people; those with complex disabilities, older people, and those with mental health problems; and lifecourse issues – ethical perspectives on a range of challenging areas from new technologies of reproduction to euthanasia.

Over the last 20 years there has been a flourishing of work on feminist care ethics. This collection makes a unique contribution to this body of work. The international contributors demonstrate the significance of care ethics as a transformative way of thinking across diverse geographical, policy and interpersonal contexts. From Tronto’s analysis of global responsibilities, to Fudge Schormans’ re-imagining of care from the perspective of people with learning disabilities, chapters highlight the necessity of thinking about the ethics of care to achieve justice and well-being within policies and practice. This book will be essential reading for all those seeking such outcomes.

This book provides a hard-hitting and deliberately provocative overview of the relationship between evidence, policy and practice; how policy is implemented, and how research can and should influence the policy process. It critiques the notion of ‘evidence-based practice’, suggesting instead a more inclusive idea of ‘knowledge-base practice’, based in part on the lived experience of service users.

A call for change in healthcare thinking, this book explores the fundamental currents and tensions behind recent trends in policy, such as shared decision making, coproduction, and personalization. While these trends are often discussed in connection with a transition in epidemiological thought, this book argues that they instead embody a philosophical shift—a change in our conception of healthcare and of appropriate forms of knowledge and analysis. As clinical concerns are increasingly nested within social concerns, policy analysis must engage with the multiple philosophical tensions that are now at the heart of the healthcare debate. The book's focus on these key, underlying ideas could not be more timely. Accessibly written and with international relevance, the book will help fuel a shift from a delivery model of healthcare to a deliberative one.

The number of disability related support services controlled and run by disabled people themselves has increased significantly in the UK and internationally over the past forty years. As a result, greater user involvement in service provision and delivery is a key priority for many western governments. This book provides the first comprehensive review and analysis of these developments in the UK. Drawing on evidence from a range of sources, including material from the first national study of user-controlled services, this book provides a critical evaluation of the development and organization of user-controlled services in the UK and identifies the principal forces — economic, political and cultural — that influence and inhibit their further development. It summarises and discusses the policy implications for the future development of services and includes an up-to-date and comprehensive literature and research review.

Everyone will experience a number of transitions throughout their life. Many of these will be positive, others may present challenges. This book addresses significant transitions relevant to policy and practice, covering key transition points in social care from childhood to old age. Drawing on the best-available research evidence, it highlights issues common to all experiencing transition, as well as the dilemmas specific to particular situations. Individual chapters explore what we know about how transition is experienced by young people leaving care and by those with learning disabilities and mental-health problems. For young people seeking asylum, there are multiple transitions: of age, of country, and of culture. Further contributions address the current transformation from service provision to self-directed support, the major transition for older people who move to supported living, and the enduring challenges that surround the transition from hospital to community. The practice orientation of the book is reinforced by the inclusion of evidence-based practice guidance for each of the areas addressed and a strong emphasis throughout on the implications for practice development.

The volume presents a critical history of deinstitutionalisation and the subsequent policy of community care. It explores the development of the asylum regime, the challenges to it and finally the development of community care. It argues that the vision of community based mental health services has never been realized. The failings of community care in the 1990s and the media reporting of high-profile cases led to a backlash against the policy. Despite this, it has been adopted across the world and international perspectives are discussed. The links between deinstitutionalization and the expansion of the use of imprisonment are examined. The final chapters examine the landscape of contemporary mental health services.

Handling personal and often sensitive information is central to daily practice in social and health services. However, the increasing emphasis on multi-disciplinary and inter-agency working required for effective, joined-up services presents new challenges and dilemmas in preserving citizens' rights to privacy. This book examines key philosophical, ethical, and legal issues in the area of privacy and confidentiality, and explores their implications for policy and practice. Offering a range of analytical frameworks, the book focuses on different practice areas, including health and social care, children's services, and criminal justice. The contributors–from disciplines including law, philosophy, anthropology, and the personal service professions–bring their direct personal experience of working to create new systems and practices in a turbulent policy environment. The book provides a synoptic multi-disciplinary view of this increasingly challenging area where technological development, civil liberties, surveillance, health, and welfare become inexorably intertwined.

As the number of people affected by dementia continues to rise, this is the first in-depth examination of related services dedicated to the unique demands of remote and rural settings. Contributors from the UK, Australia, North America and Europe explore the experiences and requirements of those living with dementia and those caring for them in personal and professional capacities in challenging geographical locations. For practitioners, researchers, academics and policy makers, this book is an essential review of evidence and strategies to date, and a guide to future research needs and opportunities for improvements in rural dementia practice.

This book's message is that palliative care does not deliver on its aims to value people who are dying and make death and dying a natural part of life. The book draws from wide social-science perspectives and critically and specifically applies these to palliative care and its dominant medical model. The author argues for the de-institutionalisation of palliative care and the development of an alternative framework to the approaches found in hospices, palliative care units, and community-based palliative care services. He offers a new conceptualisation of death and loss that refines and expands modern understandings in a way which also resonates with traditional religious views concerning death. Wide-ranging recommendations advise fundamental change in the concept of palliative care, the way support and services are organised, and the day-to-day practice of palliative care.

Tackling inequalities in health is an essential social-work task. Every day, social workers grapple with the impact on people's lives of the social inequalities that shape their health chances and experience. This book examines the relationship between social work and health inequalities in the context of globalisation. Based on the practice expertise and research of social workers from developing and developed countries worldwide and using specific examples, it demonstrates the relevance of health inequalities to social-work practice and policy across the lifecourse; analyses barriers to good health that result from global social, economic, environmental, and political trends; and develops core ideas on how social workers can act to combat negative effects of globalisation by adopting a health-inequalities lens. The book is a snapshot of a new global social work that is responsive to local conditions and circumstances but seeks partners in the international struggle for equity, rights, and social justice.

Advocacy is an area of increasing importance in service provision, where new ways of working have to be found that increasingly create an enabling, rather than a providing, state. It has an important part to play in this shift. Based on the experience of real advocates, this book is written in a jargon-free style. As well as practical chapters on what advocates do, using case studies from Scotland, where important developments are taking place, it discusses how advocacy fits into the broader scheme of things. The author describes and discusses examples of advocacy, with chapters dealing with management, training, and evaluation of the work. The book concludes with a thought-provoking discussion of various strategies that help vulnerable people speak to power on more equal terms.

Issues of gender and alcohol are approached in ways which demonstrate the need to look differently at our understandings of women’s alcohol use. The use of a social model enables contributing authors to challenge medical models and position them within a political context. Prejudice and injustice are addressed, including the marginalization of women’s needs and the prevalence of outdated models. The book draws attention to failures and misunderstandings whereby the relevance to alcohol use of gender, social class and race have contributed to poor treatment, social injustice, and personal despair. Women’s alcohol use, whether seen as problematic or not, is culturally situated, and as such will reflect the power imbalance remaining within our social structures. This is an interdisciplinary, theoretically grounded book, which is in addition empirically based.