2021 marks the 40th anniversary of the Limehouse Declaration and the launch of the Social Democratic Party in the UK, which was later to merge and form the Liberal Democrats. To mark this important milestone, this book brings together prominent politicians from across the spectrum of social democracy to reflect on its history and the challenges it faces in the coming decades. With an introduction by Sir Vince Cable describing the current state of social democracy across the world, leading figures including Sarah Olney, Roger Liddle and Chris Huhne explore a wide range of contentious policy areas such as the economy, housing and globalisation. Together, they set out a vision for the country and for the Liberal Democrats that has social justice at its core.
Neoliberal-driven austerity has changed the role of the state, public service provision and citizenship. Thriving in today’s society is a challenge for communities around the world as governments increasingly promote privatisation, centralised control, individual responsibility and battle with the impacts of Covid19. Co-authored by practitioners and academics and based on case studies of collaborations between civil society and the civic university, this book uses the North East of England as a lens to explore how different communities have responded to changing circumstances. The case studies present examples of actions aiming to create hope and inspiration for communities in challenging times.
This book brings together contributions from a range of social welfare settings, including child welfare, unemployment, mental health and substance abuse treatment, to examine how interprofessional collaboration and service user participation are realised or challenged in multi-agency meetings. It provides empirically grounded analyses of specific aspects of multi-agency work and offers a distinctive conceptual framework for understanding and analysing interaction during meetings in various social welfare settings. Based on audio and video recordings, the authors provide clear examples of actual practices of social welfare professionals and demonstrate how the realisation of collaborative and integrated welfare policy is contingent on effective interactional practices between professionals and service users.
Bringing together new, multidisciplinary research, this book explores how children and young people across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas experience and cope with situations of poverty and precarity. It looks at the impact of neoliberalism, austerity and global economic crisis, evidencing the multiple harms and inequalities caused. It also examines the different ways that children, young people and families ‘get by’ under these challenging circumstances, showing how they care for one another and envisage more hopeful socio-political futures.
The ongoing social crises and moral conflicts evident in global social policy debates are addressed in this timely volume. Leading interdisciplinary scholars focus on the ‘social’ of social policy, which is increasingly conceived in a globalized form, as new international agreements and global goals engender social struggles. They tackle pressing ‘social questions’, many of which have been exacerbated by COVID-19, including growing inequality, changing world population, ageing societies, migration and intersectional disadvantage. This ground-breaking volume critically engages with contested conceptions of ‘the social’ which are increasingly deployed by international institutions and policy makers. Focusing on ‘social sustainability’, ‘social cohesion’, ‘social justice’, ‘social wellbeing’ and ‘social progress’ this text is even more crucial as policy makers look to accelerate socially sustainable solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.