Social justice and social policy in Scotland offers a critical engagement with the state of social policy in one of the devolved nations of the UK, a decade after the introduction of devolution. Promoting greater social justice has been held up as a key vision of successive Scottish administrations since devolution began. It is argued throughout this important book that the analysis of Scottish social policy must therefore be located in wider debates around social injustice as well as about how the devolution process affects the making, implementation and impact of social policy. Social justice and social policy in Scotland focuses on a diverse range of topics and issues, including income inequalities, work and welfare, criminal justice, housing, education, health and poverty, each reflecting the themes of social inequality and social justice. This book will be essential reading for academics, researchers, policy makers and practitioners as well as students of social policy and of society in Scotland and other devolved nations.

A critical engagement with the state of social policy a decade after Scotland's devolution in the UK, this book focuses on the successive Scottish administration's key vision of greater social justice as it pertains to the analysis of its social policy. Arguing that such analysis must be located in wider debates about social justice, it shows how the devolution process has affected the making, implementation, and impact of Scotland's social programs. Looking at a range of topics, including income inequality, work and welfare, criminal justice, housing, education, and health, the contributors to this volume offer a comprehensive look at the ways administrative vision has been translated--or not--into effective policy.

This text integrates the description & analysis of social policy in Scotland since devolution in 1999. It has been designed to support the delivery of social policy & related courses in Scotland itself but also to appeal to students on social policy, politics, sociology, and regional studies courses.

This revised second edition analyses social policy in Scotland since devolution in 1999 and reflects the nascent and distinctively Scottish policy agenda. Along with updated chapters, there are two new inclusions: a chapter analysing post-devolution Scotland and a chapter on the likely impacts of Brexit on and within Scotland. Providing diagrams, tables and a range of activities, the book maintains an innovative and pedagogic emphasis to introduce students to a wealth of materials, ideas and practical responses to the increasingly complex and diverse situations faced by social workers and other professionals. Part 1 of the book looks at what social policy is, how and why it is made and highlights the importance of the relationship between social policy and the law. Part 2 refers to specific themes of social exclusion, poverty and (more visible for this revised edition) austerity, considering their complex and multidimensional forms and discussing the range of policies currently extant that aim to combat such disadvantage. Part 3 provides a comprehensive overview of policy for practice, considering concepts of health inequality, mental health, older people, disability, children and families, education, substance use, criminal justice, asylum and immigration and homelessness. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as post-qualified professionals seeking to understand the complexities of the social policy landscape in Scotland, and its influence on social work and related forms of professional practice.

Social justice is a contested term, incorporated into the language of widely differing political positions. Those on the left argue that it requires intervention from the state to ensure equality, at least of opportunity; those on the right believe that it can be underpinned by the economics of the market place with little or no state intervention. To date, political philosophers have made relatively few serious attempts to explain how a theory of social justice translates into public policy. This important book, drawing on international experience and a distinguished panel of political philosophers and social scientists, addresses what the meaning of social justice is, and how it translates into the everyday concerns of public and social policy, in the context of both multiculturalism and globalisation.

Despite the recent proliferation of literature on nationalism and on social policy, relatively little has been written to analyse the possible interaction between the two. Scholars interested in social citizenship have indirectly dealt with the interaction between national identity and social programs such as the British NHS, but they have seldom examined this connection in reference to nationalism. Specialists of nationalism rarely mention social policy, focusing instead on language, culture, ethnicity, and religion. The main objective of this book is to explore the nature of the connection between nationalism and social policy from a comparative and historical perspective. At the theoretical level, this analysis will shed new light on a more general issue: the relationships between identity formation, territorial politics, and social policy. Although this book refers to the experience of many different countries, the main cases are three multinational states, that is, states featuring strong nationalist movements: Canada (Québec), the United Kingdom (Scotland), and Belgium (Flanders). The book looks at the interplay between nationalism and social policy at both the state and sub-state levels through a detailed comparison between these three cases. In its concluding chapter, the book brings in cases of mono-national states (i.e. France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States) to provide broader comparative insight on the meshing of nationalism and social policy. The original theoretical framework for this research is built using insight from selected scholarship on nationalism and on the welfare state.