The Circle's vision

Co-creating a unique, community-led vision for care and support (Approx. 4 weeks)

After trust is built and relationships are established, the next phase focuses on shaping a shared vision for care and support in the local area and beyond.

This is about starting with the people who live there, not with a pre-designed model. It ensures that the Circle is led by residents, rooted in local realities, and not directed top-down by Equal Care Co-op.

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What happens during this phase?

Over eight group sessions (with one-to-one support moving to fortnightly), Circle Founders take part in the Equal Care Visioning Course: a structured but flexible workshop series that builds a unique, locally-owned vision for social change.

We also offer additional training sessions depending on the group's needs, for example:

• Using tech tools for collaboration

• Advanced facilitation skills

• Deeper sociocracy practice

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About Visioning

Visioning moves through five key stages:

1. Naming Identifying the key ideas, values and realities shaping people’s lives and support experiences.

2. Extraction Uncovering hidden assumptions and cultural myths — about care, about ageing, about death, about dependency — and beginning to critically examine them.

3. Imagination Creating space for radical imagination: What could care and community life really look like if it was built on trust, equality, and relationship?

4. Reflection Testing these visions against real-world experiences, concerns, and possibilities. What’s aspirational? What’s achievable now?

5. Implementation Beginning to move from ideas into action — preparing to share this vision more widely with the local community and incorporate it into Circle decision-making.

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The bigger purpose

This isn't just an academic exercise. The goal is to produce thoughtful action toward systemic change in social care — change driven by small, representative groups (Circles), rooted in lived experience, owned by the group, not imposed from outside.

By running this process fully with each founding group, we support the creation of place-based, locally-owned visions — visions that evolve the Equal Care model to fit different communities, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all approach.

Each new Circle will bring its own wisdom, experiments, and innovations into the wider movement for co-operative, relationship-centred care.

How we expect to feel and what we expect to know during this period

This period of visioning is not just about tasks — it’s about emotions, relationships, and shared understanding. Here’s what we expect to experience and work towards:

🌱 How we expect to feel:

• Curiosity

• Engagement

• A sense of possibility and hope

• Moments of surprise

• Feeling challenged and sometimes uncomfortable (in a safe, supported way)

• Bravery

• Safety — emotional and psychological safety to explore hard topics

📚 What we aim to understand and achieve:

• A mutual understanding of each other’s aims, goals, values, expectations, and approaches

• Clear plans for bringing the conversation to the wider community:

  • What we’ll say

  • How we’ll listen

  • How we’ll reach people meaningfully

• An initial picture of how care, support, death, and dying currently take place in the local area — its spaces, its people, and its aspirations for change

• A working understanding of Equal Care’s model, including:

  • How the Circle connects financially and structurally to the wider Co-op

  • What the path toward sustainability could look like