The 'Little Heresies' seminars provide an important public platform to debate the future of public services. This is the second published collection of talks given at those seminars. Both books takes their title from the first seminar, Kittens are Evil: it is still widely believed that private sector management methods and policies work well in the public sector. To suggest that they create perverse incentives and lasting damage to the social fabric is still a heresy. In this seco...

As many social inequalities widen, this is a crucial survey of local authorities’ evolving role in health, social care and wellbeing.Health and social and public policy experts review structural changes in provision and procurement, and explore social determinants of health including intergenerational needs and housing. With detailed assessments of regional disparities and case studies of effective strategies and interventions from local authorities, this collaborative study addres...

ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.How can public services and social interventions create and sustain good outcomes for the populations they serve?Building on research in public health, social epidemiology and the social determinants of health, this book presents complexity theory as an alternative basis for an outcome-oriented public management praxis. It takes a critical approach towards New Public Management and provides new conceptual inroads...