Hilary Cottam – författare

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. Then we see those over sixty design a new and affordable system of support. At the heart of this way of working is human connection. Upending the current crisis of managing scarcity, we see instead that our capacities for the relationships that can make the changes are abundant. We must work with individuals, families and communities to grow the core capabilities we all need to flourish. Radical Help describes the principles behind the approach, the design process that makes the work possible and the challenges of transition. It is bold - and above all, practical. 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.

''Highly recommend - practical and full of human wisdom'' FINANCIAL TIMES''Brimming with ideas to transform the future'' KATE RAWORTH, author of DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS''An act of radical hope, radical listening and radical humility . . . I loved it'' RORY STEWARTWork, for decades, has been debated and discussed as a narrow economic category. Instead, Hilary Cottam identifies work as a cultural force at the heart of good lives, strong communities and a sense of a shared national destiny. Crucially, in these dramatic times, she shows how we can shape this force to meet technological change, our ecological crisis and the challenges of the world''s deep injustices. We can create a work revolution. Ambitious but rooted in the ideas of everyday experts - real workers from all walks of life - this is a realistic and hopeful book. Hilary Cottam has crossed the UK and the USA; she''s spent time in communities considered by outsiders as ''left behind'' and in places at the centre of financial and technological power. Drawing on a fascinating range of sources - historians, trade unionists, business leaders, philosophers and most originally, hours of her imaginative workshops with workers - Hilary Cottam boldly asks: how can we redesign work? Our challenges - political, social, economic and environmental - are tangled and growing. But so are the imaginative solutions. In this exciting, inspiring and optimistic book, Hilary shows us how we could work differently and live better.''So valuable . . . Hilary Cottam proposes a bold new vision of what the principles underlying ''good work'' might be'' MARIANA MAZZUCATO, UCL professor and author of MISSION ECONOMY ''Timely . . . guides the changes needed'' CARLOTA PEREZ''Exposes what motivates workers today - not the things most business leaders think - and shows how new thinking would benefit us all. Compelling'' MARTHA LANE FOX''Urgent, compelling and ultimately hopeful . . . Necessary and Inspiring'' CAROLINE LUCAS, Green Party MP and author of ANOTHER ENGLAND''Cottam is the humane revolutionary our turbulent century needs - and this book our roadmap to a better future'' JONATHAN FREEDLAND, author of THE ESCAPE ARTIST