Description
Book SynopsisHow should we live: how should we care for one another; grow our capabilities to work, to learn, to love and fully realise our potential? This exciting and ambitious book shows how we can re-design the welfare state for this century.
The welfare state was revolutionary: it lifted thousands out of poverty, provided decent homes, good education and security. But it is out of kilter now: an elaborate and expensive system of managing needs and risks. Today we face new challenges. Our resources have changed.
Hilary Cottam takes us through five ''Experiments'' to show us a new design. We start on a Swindon housing estate where families who have spent years revolving within our current welfare systems are supported to design their own way out. We spend time with young people who are helped to make new connections - with radical results. We turn to the question of good health care and then to the world of work and see what happens when people are given different tool
Trade Review
Packed with moving vignettes . . . Cottam's ideas could help transform the way we all live * New Statesman *
Humane and beautifully written . . . there are powerful ideas here. This book should lie required reading for every politician, professional and manager who seeks to make the UK a better place -- Nicolas Timmins * Prospect *
Radical Help is the most important book I have read in the last decade. It is a must read for everyone - in the public, civic, or private sectors - who believes that we can indeed make a measurable and lasting difference in the lives of our fellow human beings, even those who may seem hardest to help -- Anne-Marie Slaughter
