This exciting and innovative Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive and globally relevant overview of the instruments, actors and design features of social protection systems, as well as their application and impacts in practice. It is the first book that centres around system building globally, a theme that has gained political importance yet has received relatively little attention in academia.

This cutting-edge Handbook argues for social protection to be situated in a wider system of social welfare and development programmes for low- and middle-income countries. Focusing on the role of citizens and communities in enhancing human development, it explores how welfare systems are unfolding in diverse contexts across the global South.

Providing universal access to social protection and health systems for all members of society, including the poor and vulnerable, is increasingly considered crucial to international development debates. This is the first book to explore from an interdisciplinary and global perspective the reforms of social protection systems introduced in recent years by many governments of low and middle-income countries. Although a growing body of literature has been concerned with the design and impact of social protection, less attention has been directed towards analyzing and explaining these reform processes themselves. Through case studies of African, Asian, and Latin American countries, this book examines the ‘global phenomenon’ of recent social protection reforms in low and middle-income areas, and how it differs across countries both in terms of scope and speed of institutional change. Exploring the major domestic and international factors affecting the political feasibility of social protection reform, the book outlines the successes and failures of recent reform initiatives. This invaluable book combines contributions from both academics and practitioner experts to give students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of social security, economics, law and political science an in-depth understanding of political reform processes in developing countries.

The Handbook of Social Policy and Development makes a groundbreaking, coherent case for enhancing collaboration between social policy and development. With wide ranging chapters, it discusses a myriad of ways in which this can be done, exploring both academic and practical activities. As the conventional distinction between ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ countries becomes increasingly blurred, this Handbook explores how collaboration between social policy and development is needed to meet global social needs.

This first-of-its kind volume spans the breadth of disability research and practice specifically focusing on the global South. Established and emerging scholars alongside advocates adopt a critical and interdisciplinary stance to probe, challenge and shift common held social understandings of disability in established discourses, epistemologies and practices, including those in prominent areas such as global health, disability studies and international development. Motivated by decolonizing approaches, contributors carefully weave the lived and embodied experiences of disabled people, families and communities through contextual, cultural, spatial, racial, economic, identity and geopolitical complexities and heterogeneities. Dispatches from Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Venezuela among many others spotlight the complex uncertainties of modern geopolitics of coloniality; emergent forms of governance including neoliberal globalization, war and conflicts; the interstices of gender, race, ethnicity, space and religion; structural barriers to redistribution and realization of rights; and processes of disability representation. This handbook examines in rigorous depth, established practices and discourses in disability including those on development, rights, policies and practices, opening a space for critical debate on hegemonic and often unquestioned terrains. Highlights of the coverage include: Critical issues in conceptualizing disability across cultures, time and space The challenges of disability models, metrics and statistics Disability, poverty and livelihoods in urban and rural contexts Disability interstices with migration, race, ethnicity, ge nder and sexuality Disabilit y, religion and customary societies and practice · The UNCRPD, disability rights orientations and instrumentalitie · Redistributive systems including budgeting, cash transfer systems and programming. · Global South–North partnerships: intercultural methodologies in disability research. This much awaited handbook provides students, academics, practitioners and policymakers with an authoritative framework for critical thinking and debate about disability, while pushing theoretical and practical frontiers in unprecedented ways.

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.

The Routledge International Handbook of Social Development, Social Work, and the Sustainable Development Goals answers the question: What is the contribution of social development and social work to the Sustainable Development Goals? The success of these goals requires implementation, and each of the 17 objectives for sustainable social progress have a social dimension. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before them, were born of a larger social development movement which over the last 25 years has become increasingly mainstream in the fields of international development, sustainability, and social work. These practitioners are essential to the implementation of the SDGs. This handbook examines how the SDGs are being implemented in diverse contexts. No previous work has surveyed social development and social work’s contribution to the SDGs nor represented voices from the Global South on the SDGs. This book broadens the current literature by focusing on key sites throughout the Global South and featuring underrepresented voices from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These regions are vitally important to assessing the SDGs, as this is where innovative social development projects are occurring, and where social workers are playing a leading role in achieving the SDGs. The book is divided into eight parts: • Context of Social Development, Social Work, and the SDGs • Perspectives on the SDGs • Case Studies on Engagement with the SDG Agenda • Case Studies on Ending Poverty • Case Studies on Health and Well-Being • Case Studies on Gender Equality • Case Studies on Climate and Sustainability • Case Studies on Governance, Peace, and Justice It comprises 35 newly written chapters by 74 authors. It will be of interest to a broad interdisciplinary audience of scholars, educators, and students in the fields of social development, social welfare, social work, social policy, human rights, international relations, political science, international affairs, sustainability, community development, area studies, and development studies.