Making Formal Care Visible and Fostering Collaboration
In most communities, formal care and support services, such as healthcare providers, social workers, and professional care organizations, often operate in isolation from the wider community. The care and support relationships they provide remain largely invisible to other local actors. This invisibility creates barriers, not only limiting the ability of care workers to connect with informal or family networks but also reducing the potential for collaboration with community-based care systems.
Formal care providers, whether individual care workers or larger organizations, often face structural challenges, such as time constraints, regulatory boundaries, and a lack of communication channels, which prevent them from engaging with grassroots community networks. As a result, they rarely have the opportunity to collaborate with or tap into the rich ecosystem of local support, mutual aid, and informal caregiving that could complement their efforts.
The care mapping tool seeks to break down these barriers by providing a platform where formal care services can be integrated with local care and support networks. The mapping tool uncovers the often invisible forms of unpaid care and support that flows through these networks to make them more available. This not only promotes collaboration but also ensures that the support ecosystem becomes more holistic, responsive, and resilient.
The mapping tool encourages the integration of formal and informal care, fostering an environment where individual care workers and organizations can participate in a shared system of support. This collaborative approach seeks to enhances the overall quality of care in the community by making resources more accessible, building trust between formal and informal caregivers, and creating a cohesive network where care wealth can flow freely and benefit all.
By enabling collaborations between formal care providers and local community networks, care can be transformed from a solely task-based, bodily needs-focused service into a more holistic, relationship-centered approach. These collaborations allow care workers to connect with informal networks that offer emotional, social, and cultural support, enriching the overall care experience with deeper connections, community engagement, and a greater sense of belonging for individuals receiving care. This integration addresses not just physical needs but also the emotional, mental, and social well-being of individuals, promoting a more comprehensive and dignified care model.
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How to Access and Use the Care Mapping Tool
To begin, visit Kumu’s website and sign up for a free account. This will give you access to the platform’s basic features, which are sufficient for exploring and using the care mapping tool.
2. Access the Project
Once logged in, search for the Clapton Common Care Map or use the direct link provided by the project administrator. You will be able to view the map and explore the connections between the different care organizations, groups, and individuals.
3. Fork the Project
To adapt the tool for your own needs:
• Click on the “Fork” button in the top-right corner of the project page. This will create a copy of the map in your own Kumu account.
• Once forked, you can customize the map by adding your own elements (organizations, groups, care teams) and connections, tailoring it to reflect your local care network.
4. Adapt the Template
With your own copy of the map, you can:
• Modify the existing relationships to reflect your local context.
• Add or remove elements based on your community’s needs.
• Edit labels, descriptions, and categories to suit the structure and language of your care network.
5. Collaborate with Others
You can invite other community members to collaborate on your map by sharing the project link or granting them editing access. This fosters a collective approach to building and maintaining the care network.
By forking the project and adapting the template, you can use this care mapping tool to explore and enhance your own community’s care landscape.
How to Use the Mapping Tool
The Kumu platform is used to create an interactive relationship map, not a geographical one. It is designed to represent and analyze complex networks, focusing on how people, organizations, and teams within the community are interconnected.
Key Elements:
Organizations: Includes local services, religious centers, community organizations, and businesses
Groups: Refers to informal collectives such as mutual aid groups and support circles.
Teams: Self-managing care teams are also represented, often the central actors in mapping care. If you dont use a teams model of care you can change the element type to 'supported person".
Connections:
Thin solid lines represent a confirmed connection or past collaborations
Thick solid lines represent an active connection, involving an ongoing collaboration that is generating value
Dashed lines indicate pending or yet-to-be-established relationships.
Measuring "Care Wealth"
Care labour encompasses a wide range of essential activities, both paid and unpaid, that support the well-being of individuals and communities. These activities are not limited to formal services like caregiving professionals but also include informal community efforts and family networks. The care mapping tool helps to identify, categorize, and visualize these various forms of care labour as “care wealth,” emphasizing how this wealth flows through and sustains the community.
By completing the types of care fields in elements within the map, users can document the presence of diverse forms of care—from paid/formal services such as psychologists, home health aides, and professional organizers, to informal community support like mutual aid networks, volunteer caregiving, and peer support groups. Additionally, the map highlights the critical contributions of family and kinship networks, such as the caregiving done by family members, informal financial help, or child-rearing duties performed by extended family.
The mapping tool also measures the flow of care labour throughout the network by completing the types of care connection fields. This feature tracks how care services and support move between individuals, organizations, and communities, whether through formal collaborations (e.g., between service providers) or informal relationships (e.g., family members assisting one another). These connections help reveal how care wealth is built, sustained, and circulated across the network.
In doing so, the tool makes visible the interdependent relationships that form the backbone of community care, highlighting the crucial yet often overlooked roles of care labour in nurturing community resilience and well-being.
Challenges and Opportunities
The mapping tool presents both opportunities for enhanced community collaboration and challenges related to implementation.
Challenges:
Resource Limitations: Gathering and updating data requires substantial time and effort from both care mappers and community members. It is highly unlikely that individual care provider will have this capacity, partnerships with local anchor community organizations are therefore essential for its use.
Community Engagement: Ensuring participation from local organizations and individuals can be difficult, especially if they don’t immediately perceive the map’s benefits or don't feel confident in using tech.
Evolving Relationships: Connections in the community are dynamic, constantly changing as new relationships form or old ones dissolve. Updating the map to reflect these changes is time-consuming.
Opportunities:
Collaborative Networks: By working with local partners and using collective knowledge, the mapping process can be more efficient and engaging.
Care Wealth Visibility: The tool brings visibility to “care wealth,” highlighting the often-unseen value of both paid and unpaid care activities.
Building a Care Commons: The map supports the creation of a local Care Commons by visualizing the community care network and encouraging collaborative stewardship of care resources.
Enriching Care Beyond Task-Based Support: Collaborating with local community networks allows care providers to offer more holistic, relationship-centered care, addressing not just physical but also emotional and social needs. This enhances the overall care experience, promoting well-being and deeper connections for those receiving care.
Ongoing Maintenance and Use
The map requires regular updates to remain relevant, which can be achieved through scheduled check-ins with participants and by encouraging self-updates via Kumu. Training sessions for community members can also help them engage with the tool effectively, ensuring that the map reflects the evolving nature of local care networks.
By addressing challenges, leveraging local collaborations, and fostering ongoing engagement, the care mapping tool can become an integral part of sustaining and strengthening care networks in the community.
