The interviews and group reflections provided a wealth of insight into the lived experience of those involved in the pilot—care workers, care owners, volunteers, and organisers alike. Through open-ended conversation and deep listening, we were able to explore the subtle and significant ways that people were impacted by the project. This section presents what we learned, organised around the three core Outcome Domains of our Theory of Change:
These findings highlight the hopes, challenges, contradictions, and changes participants navigated. Many of the insights are deeply personal, others point to wider structural and systemic issues. While the original evaluation plan included the integration of platform and survey data to support this analysis, technical and capacity constraints meant that these data sources were not fully implemented during the pilot. As a result, the reflections here are drawn almost entirely from qualitative methods—interviews and group discussions—offering a narrative-based window into the project’s impact.
Though not exhaustive or conclusive, these findings offer valuable learning about what care can feel like when shaped by cooperation, trust, and local relationships—and what gets in the way. They reveal both the transformative potential of Equal Care’s model, and the practical realities that limited its reach. What follows is a textured account of real experiences, organised by theme, grounded in the voices of those at the heart of the work.
A summary of interview data is availble immeditaely below. For more detailed accounts and supporting quotes, see the full findings on the following pages.
Thematic Summary of Interview Findings. ▶️ Click to expand the summary.
🌱 Growth: Agency, Inclusion, and Individual Development
What emerged clearly:
A strong desire for agency and personalised care: Participants—especially care owners—described traditional care models as transactional and disempowering. In contrast, Equal Care was praised for trying to offer more choice, match-making based on compatibility, and honouring individual preferences.
Workers also felt empowered: Many spoke about increased confidence, being listened to, and being encouraged to take initiative. There’s a notable emphasis on psychological safety—“not being forced into anything”—as a precursor to personal growth.
Learning environments: Group spaces, though digital, were described as energetic, safe, and conducive to reflection, experimentation, and skill-building.
Tensions and limitations:
Choice was often aspirational rather than real. With few teams and limited hours, participants recognised that flexibility and compatibility were constrained by the scale of the project.
Unmet basic needs acted as a ceiling on growth. Care owners struggling with food or housing insecurity could not meaningfully focus on personal development. This underscores a major tension: models focused on empowerment and relational care are limited when structural deprivation remains unaddressed.
Implications:
Equal Care's ethos clearly resonates—but delivery needs to be underpinned by resourcing that supports scale, consistency, and structural stability.
Growth and autonomy need to be contextualised within broader socioeconomic realities—without which empowerment rhetoric can feel hollow or even misleading.
đź’ž Well-being, Relationships & Belonging: Solidarity and Emotional Connection
What emerged clearly:
Emotional relationships were central: Across roles, people valued connection, care, and shared experiences more than formal incentives. Even in a hyper-local model, emotional proximity mattered as much as physical proximity.
Care relationships went beyond tasks: Workers described companionship, informal support, and responsive care that defied the rigid role boundaries imposed in traditional services.
Facilitation mattered: Practices like emotional check-ins and deliberately slow, reflective meeting formats supported group cohesion and nurtured trust.
Tensions and limitations:
Relationship-building takes time and consistency, which conflicted with externally imposed project timelines (e.g. LOTI pressures). As one interviewee noted, the space became “task-oriented and closed” under deadline pressure.
Community roots were fragile or uneven: There were divergent views on whether the Circle was truly embedded in the community. Some pointed to strong local connections (church, shared networks), while others critiqued the project’s partnership choices and lack of deep local knowledge.
Implications:
The co-op’s strength lies in its capacity to foster authentic relationships—but this is resource-intensive and easily disrupted by time pressures or structural misalignment.
Future iterations should consider investing in slower, relationship-first infrastructure and ensuring anchor partners have deep local credibility and connections.
🤝 Systems & Co-production: Participation, Accountability, and Innovation
What emerged clearly:
Strong aspirations for shared power and decentralisation: Participants highlighted sociocratic principles like rotating facilitation, open agendas, and inclusive decision-making. These were seen to support confidence, ownership, and organic leadership.
Innovation through culture, not just tools: Rather than predefined roles, the Circle drew on the “gifts” of each volunteer. This flexible, values-led approach fostered creativity and dignity.
Tensions and limitations:
Volunteer processes struggled with structure vs spontaneity: Efforts to create meaningful induction processes clashed with the need to maintain energy and momentum. Newcomers sometimes disrupted progress; lack of clarity about roles led to fragmentation.
Accessibility wasn’t just a matter of attitude, but deep resourcing: Efforts to include people with complex access needs often fell short—not due to lack of will, but lack of time, funding, and infrastructure.
Digital infrastructure failed to deliver: Platforms like Rocket Chat and the Equal Care system weren’t well used, resulting in confusion, duplication, and disengagement. WhatsApp was more accessible, but introduced its own problems (e.g. guilt, privacy risks).
Size limited resilience: Flexibility was seen as dependent on a larger network—more people, more options, more redundancy.
Implications:
Real co-production requires not just flattened hierarchies, but investment in access, infrastructure, and scale.
Volunteer strategies must distinguish between long-term leadership, intermittent contribution, and informal gifting—and support each accordingly.
Digital tools must be truly usable, or they will undermine coordination and equity.
Across all three domains, the same tension repeats: Equal Care’s values and aspirations resonate powerfully, but implementation lags behind due to structural constraints—particularly around scale, resourcing, infrastructure, and systemic inequality.
Participants overwhelmingly endorsed the idea of cooperative care, local networks, and meaningful relationships. But the execution is fragile: limited choice, unmet needs, inconsistent access, and an overreliance on goodwill. This is a common pattern in grassroots innovation: the model shines where people are supported and connected, and falters where systemic gaps remain.
