Andy Alaszewski

First published in 1986, Institutional Care and the Mentally Handicapped is a historical record of institutions at one stage of their development. The book is divided into four parts. Part one examines the development and history of institutions, and the methods used by the author for this study. Part two explores the structure of ideas in one institution. Part three discusses the structure of social action in the institution, and the final part examines the general nature of institutions in contemporary society. This book will be a valuable read for students and researchers of social work, sociology, and disability studies.

First published in 1980, Crisis in the Health Service explores the problems of the National Health Service and discusses approaches to promote change. It examines strategies adopted since the service’s creation in 1948, finding them inadequate, particularly management structures organized as if the institution operates like a private firm. By analyzing management processes within health authorities, the book demonstrates the limited impact of central preferences on local behaviour and the variance from rationalist/managerial models underlying official blueprints. Concluding that internal politics of health agencies remain the most important behavioural factor, it illustrates how insensitive, slow, and inadequate responses to changes in demand, social pressures, and economic prospects constitute the NHS’s major problem area, arguing for a strategic change appropriate to this definition.

Based on mothers’ experiences and accounts, Community Care and the Mentally Handicapped (originally published in 1984) explores the daily challenges of caring for a severely disabled child at home. Having recognised the limitations of institutional care, the authors examine the needs and experiences of families from the initial discovery of intellectual disability in their child through practical care within the family, informal community support, and the role of formal services. By looking at the policies and services of the time and their shortcomings, the authors conclude that there was a great need for developing support networks for disabled children and their mothers. To improve the quality of care, greater assistance from both informal self-help groups and formal agencies was essential. This book, based on the shared problems, experiences, and resources of mothers from the North Humberside area, documents the realities of daily family care of intellectually disabled children. For those concerned with meeting the needs of these children, the accounts of their mothers provide invaluable perspectives.

The past 30 years have seen risk become a major field of study, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic positioning it at the centre of public awareness, yet there is limited understanding of how risk can and should be used in policy making. This book provides an accessible guide to the key elements of risk in policy making, including its role in rhetoric to legitimise decisions and choices. Using risk as a framework, it examines how policy makers in a range of countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and explains why some were more successful than others.

The past 30 years have seen risk become a major field of study, most recently with the COVID-19 pandemic positioning it at the centre of public awareness, yet there is limited understanding of how risk can and should be used in policy making. This book provides an accessible guide to the key elements of risk in policy making, including its role in rhetoric to legitimise decisions and choices. Using risk as a framework, it examines how policy makers in a range of countries responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and explains why some were more successful than others.

This new textbook opens up the policy-making process for students, uncovering how government decisions around health are really made. Starting from more traditional insights into how ministers and civil servants develop policy with limited knowledge and money, the book goes on to challenge the conception of policy as a rational process, revealing it to be something quite different. Knee-jerk reactions to disasters, keeping voters satisfied, the powerful leverage of interest groups, and the skewing of debate through ideology and the media are each considered in turn. These processes render policy far from rational or at least require a much broader approach for considering policy ‘logic’, one that is open to different rationalities of values, norms and pragmatism. The book draws on historical and contemporary examples to highlight that though challenges to policy-makers may seem in some ways novel, in many senses key processes endure and indeed are rooted in historical contexts. Although the examples are drawn from UK health and social care, the book’s theory-driven approach is applicable across national contexts Ð especially for countries where uncertainty, risk and resource pressures create significant dilemmas for policy-makers. The book’s multi-perspective, thematic approach will be especially relevant to students, as will the broad range of case study examples used. Making Health Policy will be essential reading for students of health policy, social policy, social work, and the sociology of medicine, health and illness.

This new textbook opens up the policy-making process for students, uncovering how government decisions around health are really made. Starting from more traditional insights into how ministers and civil servants develop policy with limited knowledge and money, the book goes on to challenge the conception of policy as a rational process, revealing it to be something quite different. Knee-jerk reactions to disasters, keeping voters satisfied, the powerful leverage of interest groups, and the skewing of debate through ideology and the media are each considered in turn. These processes render policy far from rational or at least require a much broader approach for considering policy ‘logic’, one that is open to different rationalities of values, norms and pragmatism. The book draws on historical and contemporary examples to highlight that though challenges to policy-makers may seem in some ways novel, in many senses key processes endure and indeed are rooted in historical contexts. Although the examples are drawn from UK health and social care, the book’s theory-driven approach is applicable across national contexts Ð especially for countries where uncertainty, risk and resource pressures create significant dilemmas for policy-makers. The book’s multi-perspective, thematic approach will be especially relevant to students, as will the broad range of case study examples used. Making Health Policy will be essential reading for students of health policy, social policy, social work, and the sociology of medicine, health and illness.

Risk thinking is transforming the understanding, organisation and management of health care systems, and its significance is likely to increase still further over the next two decades as technological advances, for example the new genetics and the discovery of new biomedical markers, open up novel possibilities for health risk management. Heightened societal risk consciousness, such as food panics and the debate over the MMR vaccine, co-exists, apparently paradoxically, with increased life expectancy in advanced industrial societies and increasing concern about the longer term future. At the same time, social trends are pushing health care systems towards the surveillance of populations and the targeting of groups identified as being at higher risk. All too often, service users, health professionals, policy makers and researchers draw upon a risk management framework without reflecting critically on its assumptions or limitations. This introductory text focuses on the underlying generic issues of risk management in a health care. Aimed at health professionals, managers, educators and policy makers who are concerned with risk management, it allows the reader to analyse risk management issues, and to critically evaluate the claims made about existing and new technologies, in an informed way. It covers all aspects of risk relevant to a clinical setting and is closely related to decision making in the clinic.

`The book has no competitor; it summarises the development of the method, follows through all stages of research from accessing subjects through design to analysing diary information as data, and considers how the method can best be exploited and used. No other book comes remotely near doing this. I for one shall be using it gratefully as the single best text for diary research' - Professor Anthony P Macmillan Coxon, Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh In this accessible and lucid introductory text, Andy Alaszewski considers the analysis of diaries as a distinctive research technique in its own right. Nothing has previously covered this area in single-volume format, but the timely emergence of Using Diaries for Social Research recognizes the increased interest in and relevance of diary methodology within social research teaching. Effectively combining theory, history and methodology, Alaszewski begins by discussing how diary keeping has developed; outlining the key features of the medium and examining the ways in which diaries have been and can be used for social research. He describes how suitable diaries and diarists can be identified by the researcher and, once found, how these diaries can be structured to generate research material. Finally, the researcher is taken through the analysis stage; examining statistical techniques, content-analysis and structure-analysis as effective methods of investigating diary texts. This introductory student guide is an essential text for anyone involved in the area of social or historical research and for those working in the narrative tradition.

`The book has no competitor; it summarises the development of the method, follows through all stages of research from accessing subjects through design to analysing diary information as data, and considers how the method can best be exploited and used. No other book comes remotely near doing this. I for one shall be using it gratefully as the single best text for diary research' - Professor Anthony P Macmillan Coxon, Honorary Professorial Fellow, University of Edinburgh In this accessible and lucid introductory text, Andy Alaszewski considers the analysis of diaries as a distinctive research technique in its own right. Nothing has previously covered this area in single-volume format, but the timely emergence of Using Diaries for Social Research recognizes the increased interest in and relevance of diary methodology within social research teaching. Effectively combining theory, history and methodology, Alaszewski begins by discussing how diary keeping has developed; outlining the key features of the medium and examining the ways in which diaries have been and can be used for social research. He describes how suitable diaries and diarists can be identified by the researcher and, once found, how these diaries can be structured to generate research material. Finally, the researcher is taken through the analysis stage; examining statistical techniques, content-analysis and structure-analysis as effective methods of investigating diary texts. This introductory student guide is an essential text for anyone involved in the area of social or historical research and for those working in the narrative tradition.

This book will providean accessible account of the key issues involved in risk assessment and management. It will focus on how nurses make decisions about clients and risk, which are essential to quality, safe nursing care. It will draw extensively on case study material gained through research in this area which the authors have undertaken and was commissioned by the English National Board, and will be likely to form the basis for educational requirements in this area in the future. Leading author in this field Link to ENB research which will be used as basis for educational developments in this area Case studies from research provide 'real life' examples from practice Drawn from 3 main areas for nursing risk management i.e. Mental health, learning disabilities, and care of the elderly Reflect multi-professional context of risk