New austerity measures have substantially changed the landscape for social and health care in the United Kingdom. Fully updated to reflect key developments under the New Labour and Coalition governments, this second edition of Understanding Health and Social Care provides an up-to-date guide to the increasingly important partnership between health and social care workers. Jon Glasby combines practical information about welfare systems with key theoretical material to present a complete picture of these overlapping fields.

The new edition of the best-selling reader Understanding Health and Social Care (previously edited by Maragraet Allot and Martin Robb) combines classic works with newly-commissioned material, offering readers unparalleled coverage of the key issues in health and social care. The breadth of material encompasses voices of service users, professional and lay carers, as well as academics and researchers. This Second Edition is organised into four new sections, each with a part introduction pulling together the main themes: - People focuses on those who use and provide health and social care services. - Places looks at where care is given - Approaches considers different ways through which care takes places - Ideas focuses on the ideas and policies that underpin care provision Full of real practice scenarios and examples, the book successfully makes the links between theory and practice, and will be an essential resource for all students studying at undergraduate level across the wide spectrum of health and social care.

No single discipline can provide a full account of why health care is the way it is. Introducing an accessible overview of health services and drawing on medicine, sociology, economics, history and epidemiology, this book provides a series of conceptual frameworks which help to clarify some of the complexity that confronts the inexperienced observer. Helping to determine what influences and shapes health services, it also examines some of the key processes involved in providing healthcare, considering three levels: individual patients, health care organizations such as hospitals, and regional or national institutions such as governments. This second edition has been updated to include recent developments and further examples and activities from low, middle and high income countries. The book examines: • how medical knowledge, staff, patients and finance shape health services • what factors influence utilization of health services • the roles played by users of health services • how to define and measure outcomes and assess performance • how practice and policy can be changed to improve the quality of health care Understanding Health Services, 2nd Edition is an essential resource for students of public health and health policy, researchers, public health practitioners and policy makers. Understanding Public Health is an innovative series published by Open University Press in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, where it is used as a key learning resource for postgraduate programmes. It provides self-directed learning covering the major issues in public health affecting low, middle and high income countries. "This excellent book provides an ideal background to understanding how health services work and how they can be studied. Not tied to any particular country, it includes key chapters on how health services have developed and are organised, need and demand, the role of health professionals, and measuring and improving quality of care. The book is ideal reading for students on Masters courses in public health and related subjects from high-, middle- and low-income countries and includes learning objectives and exercises in each chapter which can be completed individually or used for discussion. Strongly recommended." Martin Roland, Emeritus Professor of Health Services Research, University of Cambridge, UK "Health services are central to attaining high levels of population health and providing those services consumes a substantial share of our financial resources. This book provides a splendid introduction to many of the key building blocks including medical knowledge and other key inputs, payment and other factors that influence utilization, and in turn quality of care and outcomes. The learning objectives are a wonderful aid for self-directed learning as are the directed activities and feedback, the text is lucid and the main concepts are very easy to access. This is a great book for someone looking to develop a broad understanding of health services. I will be surprised if it does not become a classic. It will surely be at the top of my list of recommended readings for my own students." Arnold M Epstein, John H Foster Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health, USA

This introductory text provides a wide-ranging collection of key readings in the field of health and social care. The book features classic readings alongside articles reflecting the most recent theoretical and empirical work. Cutting across the conventional divide between health care and social care, the Reader sets out to link policy to practice in a tangible way, juxtaposing the voices of a range of carers and service users with insights from academic debate and research. The Reader is divided into five sections focusing on: the experience of caring or being cared for; the environment in which care takes place; the ways in which care has been conceptualized; issues of abuse in care settings; and the pol

A comprehensive textbook designed to guide students through the entirety of a Health and Social Care BSc degree. By using a three part structure, it covers the important topics and pressing issues relevant to Health and Social Care today. Starting with the essential areas and core knowledge, through health and social care in practice, and finishing with coverage of the challenges faced in present day health and social care.

Written specifically for Edexcel Centres, this text should provide all teachers need to teach the 2002 GCSE in Health and Social Care (Double Award). This full colour resource has been written to precisely match the requirements of the GCSEs in vocational subjects for Edexcel centres. It provides the underpinning knowledge for the courses in an accessible and easy to navigate style. Case studies throughout allow students to apply theory to vocational practice. It supports the assessment criteria set by Edexcel and contains features that link to all the QCA Assessment Objectives.

In recent years the pace of reform in health policy and the NHS has been relentless. But how are policies formed and implemented? This fully updated edition of a bestselling book explores the processes and institutions that make health policy, examining what constitutes health policy, where power lies, and what changes could be made to improve the quality of health policy making. Drawing on original research by the author over many years, and a wide range of secondary sources, the book examines the role of various institutions in the formation and implementation of health policy. Unlike most standard texts, it considers the impact of devolution in the UK and the role of European and international institutions and fills a need for an up-to-date overview of this fast-moving area. It features new case studies to illustrate how policy has evolved and developed in recent years. This new edition has been fully updated to reflect policies under the later years of New Labour and the Coalition government. Although written particularly with the needs of students and tutors in mind, this accessible textbook will also appeal to policy makers and practitioners in the health policy field.