Radical Help
Subtitle: How We Can Remake the Relationships Between Us and Revolutionise the Welfare State
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group Limited; Virago
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9780349009094
Subjects: Welfare state; Interpersonal relations; Social problems
Description: How 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 tools to make change. It is not a book of dreams. It is about concrete new ways of organising that already have been developing across Britain. Radical Help creates a new vision and a radically different approach that can take care of us once more, from cradle to grave.