Book review: Radical help: How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the welfare state, by Hilary Cottam. London: Virago. ISBN: 9780349009070

Rarely does a book about the modern ills of the welfare state excite to this degree. Cottam's accessibly written analysis of the lack of fit between Beveridge's plan for a welfare state that responded to discrete problems with specific 'neutral, depersonalised transactions' for health, income, housing and education designed to 'level opportunity and combat poverty' (p. 45) and today's chronic health conditions, persistent and elevated rates of inequality in relation to income, housing and education. Instead, Cottam argues, we need a welfare state that focuses on the relationships of kindness and care between people, and between institutions and people. Today's problems, she says, need 'collaboration, we need to be part of the change and we need systems that include all of us' (p. 46). Participation must be easy, intuitive and natural.