Paul Spicker
Social Policy on the Web
The Web offers a growing range of on-line resources in Social
Policy, but they are not always easy to access or to use. This section
offers a brief guide, with links to key sources. Following the external
links on this site will open a new window in your browser, so that you
will still have access to this page.
Many of the sites referred to here are meta-links: they offer a
gateway to a large number of connected sites.
The links on this page should all open new windows in your browser.
This allows you to review the material without leaving this site.
If you have problems with any of the links, please let me know. I have to run
a special programme to check links, but sites change their addresses
and content so frequently that it is difficult to be certain.
General resources
- The British Library's Social Welfare Portal has links to extensive
numbers of online documents, and a service which lists summaries of new
literature in a monthly digest.
- The University of Amsterdam has a wide-ranging guide to sociology resources.
Topics include ageing, poverty, gender, justice, welfare, housing,
health etc.
- Policycommons.net has searchable links to nearly three million publications, searchable by topic.
International sources
These sources offer guides to virtually every country in the world.
Several international organisations produce cross-national
statistics. They include:
Our world in data has terrific visualisations of international data.
Social Policy in the European Union
This is, disappointingly, not as well covered as one might hope; the
placing of European documentation online is still haphazard.
Social Policy in the United States
is the subject of a wide range of sites. Many are politically
charged, and not very well informed about welfare issues.
Social policy in developing countries
This is one of the best served fields. In addition to the World Bank and UNDP, try:
- Global Issues site This is an exceptionally
well-written and presented site, covering poverty and development among
other issues. It has useful links to a range of sources.
- CROP This is
the International Social Science Council's Comparative Research
Programme on Poverty. The website is limited but it has links to recent
on-line documents and some conference papers.
- The International Fund for Agricultural Development publishes reports on
rural poverty and development.
- Unesco
MOST Program MOST is a 'clearing house' for material on poverty and
development.
- The New
Zealand Digital Library has a collection of on-line documents on
development.
- The Global Policy Forum discusses a range of issues, including
international social policies.
- Our world in data provides a wide range of graphic representations of data.
Other countries
Sites dealing with national social policies include:
- Germany
: Gerhard Bäcker's site (in German) links to other German social policy
sites.
- Japan: Social Security in Japan: towards a
Japanese model of the Welfare State, by Naomi Maruo.
Social Policy in the United Kingdom
British government reports are now being produced on the web -
unfortunately, their location is not always obvious. They are usually
produced as House of Commons (HC) or Command (Cm) papers. The main
effect of the unified site has been to make it exceedingly difficult to
find anything; probably the best way is to search on the title along
with 'gov.uk'.
- Policylibrary.com
carries briefings on issues, and links to online papers from all the
think tanks.
- Statistics on poverty in the UK are available at the New Policy
Institute site. Oxfam GB also have material on poverty in the
United Kingdom.
- There is a growing number of blogs and twitterfeeds. My own blog
is at blog.spicker.uk.
I have linked to the best, most informative blogs from there.
- History of
the NHS.
Historical sources include:
- The
workhouse. This extensive site contains text, images and archival
material on the Poor Laws.
- The National Trust has acquired the building of a
former workhouse in Southwell, Nottinghamshire.
- British
Pathé News. Pathé News has video clips covering aspects of British
history from 1896 to 1970. There are free previews and stills available
on (for example) Beveridge and the National Health Service.
- The National Archive has a worthwhile "exhibition" on
citizenship rights which includes materials on the welfare state.
Resources on specific subjects
These resources have been referred to in some of the sections of
these pages. They include:
Online documents
Apart from government publications, the quality of on-line
documentation is mixed: much of what is available are conference papers
and occasional papers posted prior to conventional publication. Most
documents on-line are versions of printed material; they tend to be
large, they are usually presented in PDF format, and they can take a
long time to download. This is a fairly
miscellaneous list; suggestions would be welcome.
Note too that a growing number of universities are hosting
institutional repositories, making academic papers and reports freely
available. The open
access page on this site contains links to my own materials. Beyond
that, as part of my work for Social
policy: theory and practice, I have put together a basic list of readings that are available on the internet
and relevant to the book's chapters.