This brief resource sets out a rights-based framework for policy analysis that allows social workers to enhance their long-term vision as well as their current practice. It introduces the emerging P.A.N.E. (Participation, Accountability, Non-discrimination, Equity) model for evaluating social policy, comparing it with the traditional needs-based charity model in terms of not only effectiveness and efficiency but also inclusion and justice. Recognized standards for human rights are used to identify values crucial to informing policy goals. Exercises, key documents, and an extended example illustrate both the processes of creating empowering social policy and its best and most meaningful outcomes. Included in the coverage: Rights-based and needs-based approaches to social policy analysis. Regional and international human rights instruments. Grounding social policies in legal and institutional frameworks. Conceptualizing social issues from a human rights frame. Measuring progress on the realization of human rights. Rights-based analysis of maternity, paternity, and parental leaves in the United States. For social workers and social work researchers, A Rights-Based Approach to Social Policy Analysis gives readers a modern platform for achieving the highest goals of the field. It also makes a worthwhile class text for social work programs. ​

Policy Analysis for Social Workers offers a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to understanding the process of policy development and analysis for effective advocacy. This user-friendly model helps students get excited about understanding policy as a product, a process, and as performance—a unique “3-P” approach to policy analysis as competing texts often just focus on one of these areas. Author Richard K Caputo efficiently teaches the purpose of policy and its relation to social work values, discusses the field of policy studies and the various kinds of analysis, and highlights the necessary criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, equity, political feasibility, social acceptability, administrative, and technical feasibility) for evaluating public policy.

Designated a Doody's Core Title! Winner of an AJN Book of the Year Award! Who Has a Right to Health Care? What Is the Government's Role in Providing Accessible Health Care? How Are Corporations, Insurance Companies, and Health Care Providers Affecting the Quality of Health Care? And, Most Importantly, Can We Reform the U.S. Health Care System? We often debate these issues in health care policy or public health courses, yet we do so without the proper knowledge of the underlying structure of the U.S. health care system--or a framework by which it can be judged. Many health care workers entering the system are ill-equipped to address the issues faced in direct health care practice, in part because they have no ability to evaluate it. In this innovative text, Gunnar Almgren provides all the tools necessary to understand and critique a health care policy in dire need of change. First, he describes the historical evolution of U.S. health care, explaining how the early roles of hospitals, doctors, and nurses still influence today's system. He explains the complex financial aspects of health care, including the concerns of all its major stakeholders. He looks at the government's role in regulating and funding health care, and how that role has expanded and contracted through various political administrations. An entire chapter describes the facilities and services available for the elderly--an issue that will continue to rise in importance as America ages. Finally, he examines the many causes of disparities in the U.S. health care system. In addition, Almgren offers a unique social justice analysis as a framework by which the current system--and proposed reforms--can be judged. By analyzing the health care system through various models of social justice, we can begin to understand and address the urgent issues of economic, racial, and geographic disparities that plague our current system. With its clear, thorough, and comprehensive coverage of U.S. health care, this unique text is accessible to all those in public health, nursing, social work, public policy, or public administration. No other book addresses the underlying issues of the U.S. health care system alongside a variety of social justice models that we can use to evaluate, and perhaps eventually, change it.

Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices gives you a thorough introduction to social welfare policy analysis. The knowledge you’ll gain from its pages will enable you to understand and evaluate individual policy issues and choices by exploring the possible choices, the effects and implications of each alternative choice, and the factors that influence each choice. Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices provides frameworks for making basic social policy choices and applying them to specific instances. You’ll find its depth of insight into the larger framework in which social policy decisions are made--beliefs, values, and interests--and its historical perspective on current “new” issues unique and invaluable. The book’s approach is to develop a framework for looking at the underlying issues, ideologies, social and economic forces, culture, and institutionalized inequalities that are constant within this changing mass. Specifically, Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices provides frameworks for looking at beliefs about: human nature the nature of society ways of thinking values and the moral and ethical implications of those values roots of those values in religion, culture, historical traditions, myths, and rationalized self-interests The insight offered in Social Welfare Policy Analysis and Choices will allow you to determine your own positioning; understand for strategic purposes what direction opponents, potential allies, and others are coming from; and develop a priorities perspective to guide compromises when the optimum policy is not attainable.

Comprises 33 papers grouped under five themes: The Nature of social policy; The History of social policy; Social policy and the social services; The Political economy of social policy; and International and future perspectives on social policy.

Updated in its 3rd edition, Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning presents quickly applied methods for analyzing and resolving planning and policy issues at state, regional, and urban levels. Divided into two parts, Methods which presents quick methods in nine chapters and is organized around the steps in the policy analysis process, and Cases which presents seven policy cases, ranging in degree of complexity, the text provides readers with the resources they need for effective policy planning and analysis. Quantitative and qualitative methods are systematically combined to address policy dilemmas and urban planning problems. Readers and analysts utilizing this text gain comprehensive skills and background needed to impact public policy.

This book traces the historical development of social policy analysis, emphasizing the factors that promoted its development, the need for social policy analysis, and the fields of application for social policy analysis.

The second edition of the Impact Evaluation in Practice handbook is a comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policy makers and development practitioners. First published in 2011, it has been used widely across the development and academic communities. The book incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations. Readers will gain an understanding of impact evaluations and the best ways to use them to design evidence-based policies and programs. The updated version covers the newest techniques for evaluating programs and includes state-of-the-art implementation advice, as well as an expanded set of examples and case studies that draw on recent development challenges. It also includes new material on research ethics and partnerships to conduct impact evaluation. The handbook is divided into four sections: Part One discusses what to evaluate and why; Part Two presents the main impact evaluation methods; Part Three addresses how to manage impact evaluations; Part Four reviews impact evaluation sampling and data collection. Case studies illustrate different applications of impact evaluations. The book links to complementary instructional material available online, including an applied case as well as questions and answers. The updated second edition will be a valuable resource for the international development community, universities, and policy makers looking to build better evidence around what works in development.

In this important new book, Ray Pawson examines the recent spread of evidence-based policy making across the Western world. Few major public initiatives are mounted these days in the absence of a sustained attempt to evaluate them. Programmes are tried, tried and tried again and researched, researched and researched again. And yet it is often difficult to know which interventions, and which inquiries, will withstand the test of time. The evident solution, going by the name of evidence-based policy, is to take the longer view. Rather than relying on one-off studies, it is wiser to look to the ′weight of evidence′. Accordingly, it is now widely agreed the most useful data to support policy decisions will be culled from systematic reviews of all the existing research in particular policy domains. This is the consensual starting point for Ray Pawson′s latest foray into the world of evaluative research. But this is social science after all and harmony prevails only in the first chapter. Thereafter, Pawson presents a devastating critique of the dominant approach to systematic review - namely the ′meta-analytic′ approach as sponsored by the Cochrane and Campbell collaborations. In its place is commended an approach that he terms ′realist synthesis′. On this vision, the real purpose of systematic review is better to understand programme theory, so that policies can be properly targeted and developed to counter an ever-changing landscape of social problems. The book will be essential reading for all those who loved (or loathed) the arguments developed in Realistic Evaluation (Sage, 1997). It offers a complete blueprint for research synthesis, supported by detailed illustrations and worked examples from across the policy waterfront. It will be of especial interest to policy-makers, practitioners, researchers and students working in health, education, employment, social care, criminal justice, regeneration and welfare.