Systems Maintenaince & Co-production Outcomes
Decision-making & Planning / Effective Task Management / Accountability / Change & Innovation
In relation to the structure and processes of the organisation, one of the main challenges referenced in interviews was how to best manage volunteers. As the project evolved, so did the processes and structures for volunteer induction. The initial aim was for two different circle members to have 121 conversations with new volunteers to ensure that they were on the same page in terms of basic values and motivations for being involved in the project. The two Circle Members would then be able to discuss the volunteer - what responsibilities they might take on and what support they might need - between themselves. Organizers reflected in interviews that this was difficult to achieve in practice:
It felt like trying to schedule in a time for these two conversations was just delaying things. With community work you need to strike while the iron is hot. Otherwise people lose energy and momentum and we were wanting to build momentum.
While the importance of building energy and momentum came up as an important theme in multiple interviews, as did they importance of not rushing things. As one interviewee observed, constantly bringing in new volunteers to meeting spaces can actually disrupt the momentum you are building: "it made it harder to progress our agenda because we were having to explain from the beginning every time."
Another interviewee observed that there is an important distinction between volunteering and between 'gifting'. This is because gifting doesn't require commitment for people who, for example, can't commit to a regular slot due to irregular working hours. This was the case for a number of community members who were juggling different part time job opportunities, particularly at the end of the pandemic when people no longer had so much free time and were back to 'normal life.'
Be it volunteering or gifting, different volunteers needed different kinds of support and this made it difficult to streamline or regularise the induction process. Rather than create specific volunteer 'roles', the Circle tried to be responsive to the specific skills and preferences of each volunteer:
We wanted people to think about their own self interest from the start and also what they specifically could bring. Instead of filling a hole with people, we wanted to look at the volunteers we had and allow that to shape what we were doing. It was about bringing their gifts to the centre. We also came up with metaphors to think about different kinds of volunteers: elephants (who play a long term strategic role), bees (who like to collaborate as part of a team) and butterflies (who come in and out but don't want to be pinned down).
The examples of different "gifts" mentioned in interviews that volunteers brought to the project were rich and varied: "Double Bass Dan and his group came and provided music for one of our parties... Greg, a local social care worker came along and gave us advice sessions on how social care provision works... Rafa was a Warm Welcome visitor who offered to help us with marketing and branding."
One interviewee also highlighted that many of the volunteers faces their own issues with mental health and neuro-divergence, "even those who offer help are vulnerable." Where charities often "recruit people with privilege not with potential", for the Clapton Circle it was really important to recruit people who they believed could grow through taking on new responsibilities.
Related to these questions around what support is available for volunteers is the issue more broadly of access and inclusivity. A number of interviewees referred to the way in which Equal Care had taken steps to include individuals who face barriers to access. However, there was also a shared feeling that the steps taken weren't enough. One of the organisers described the extent of the challenge:
To make meetings accessible, we would have needed a carer to go to someone's house an hour before every meeting was scheduled. They would have had to spend time with the person to get them in the mood to participate. Maybe even help them to get dressed. We moved our meetings to the more accessible, close space possible and still people were unable to attend. They were too ill or weak, struggling with mental health problems or unable to schedule due to memory issues from cognitive impairments.
When access requirements are broken down into specific actions and the time they take in this way, the extent of the challenge becomes visible. This is not something that can be addressed through a 'culture shift' or any last minute add-on measures. It has deep implications for the entire resourcing and associated budget of the project. As the same organiser observed, in order to actually be 'inclusive', you would need to increase the overall budget by 30% to meet accessibility needs.
For this project, the Systems Outcome Domain is fundamentally related not just to what happens within Equal Care itself, but also the external organisations that it collaborates with and the nature of these collaborations. In a number of interviews, there were stories of the more and less successful collaborations that had defined the project. One of the organisers talked about the importance of establishing a clear set of criteria in the future for what kind of organisation they would productively work with. For example, if an organisation is extremely big and well resourced, they might have different goals and no self-interest in really working together unless it fits with their goals. Large community organisations also may have a service provision model that is compatible with the sociocratic, community organising model that defines Equal Care. On the other hand, small, emerging grassroots organisations might be too under-resourced to think about anything beyond the immediate needs they are trying to meet.
Digital tools and infrastructure have an important role to play in enabling the different processes and structures. The platforms that the Circle used and how they used them changed throughout the project. Care data is stored on two different platforms: the Equal Care Platform and on Rocket Chat and all team members can see and interact with their data on both these platforms. However, in practice, very few team members actually used these platforms to interact with their data. Only 1 out of the 4 team members had edited their profile data through the platform and the other three only interacted with their data when hard copies were printed and read out, creating an opportunity for verbal feedback. No family members participating in the pilot took the time to fill out their profiles.
The intention was for digital platforms to engance communication and coordination but interviewees described how in many cases there was a lot of confusion. Often, circle members struggled to use Rocket Chat for a number of reasons including how it would automatically log out on people's phones. "This meant that people were actually messaging on both WhatsApp and Rocket Chat. People were then excluded from important conversations. It wasn't clear who had received what information. It also resulted in a duplication of labour." Another interviewee described the platform as "a bit of a no-mans land."
Shifting communication to WhatsApp as a more accessible option also came with its own set of challenges:
After a while we moves to using WhatsApp because it felt like the easiest way to stay connected and share information. But we found that sometimes if you added someone to the core WhatsApp group, then they started feeling like they weren't doing enough. People felt like they couldn't keep up with messages and this made them feel guilty.
In relation to WhatsApp, one interviewee also raised concerns around privacy and data-sharing, particularly in relation to sensitive personal care data.
A fundamental criteria for evaluating Equal Care in relation to System Domains is the extend to which the project is genuinely co-produced and the sociocratic structures implemented in practice. Across the interviews, there were a number of examples of more 'horizontal' or participatory processes and decision-making structures.
It helped to have a very simple agenda for meetings. Everyone has a say in a meeting - its democratic. There is a rotating facilitator or notetaker. This helps people to explore what that feels like, leading the conversation.
One of the Care Owners described how they felt that Equal Care 'got rid of the idea of a boss' and the positive impact that had on the quality of the service: "if you both think of yourselves as partners getting tasks done, it makes it feel nicer and easier. Because then the person is doing it from a place of cooperation, not from being bossed around."
The idea of 'getting rid of the boss' relates to the empowerment of both the Care Owner and the Care Receiver. One of the Care Owners described how "its very difficult to feel like you have any power when you are being looked after my someone, when they are literally helping you use the toilet. What do you do when you are scared of someone? You literally imagine them on the toilet!"
In addition to the official processes and rules that enable co-production, the idea of a 'culture' where people feel empowered to take action and do things themselves came up repeatedly in interviews: "we wanted to create a context in which things can happen spontaneously." Example of this include the events that happened on the common, in some cases with no existing budget, where people came together for food, music, clothes-swapping. The Huddle was a good example of this and resulted in two generative collaborations: a community cook who offered to make meals for some of the residents and a community gardener who ended up helping the residents to prepare and plant beds in the garden of the sheltered housing.
Interviewees used different metaphors to convey this culture of possibility, where the circumstances are right to allow things to just hapen. One of the organisers used the metaphor of a soup or a stew that everyone can add a different ingredient to, allowing the flavour to change over time. For a family member of one of the Care Owners, the idea of "leaving room for the unseen, for the unexpected" had a spiritual element that he compared to praying. "A prayer is an action, an intention. Sometimes we need to let go as individuals and let things happen through people coming together as a collective."
For Systems Domain Outcomes, change and innovation are a very important element. This means the extent to which an organisation is adaptable and responsive to challenges, able to find new solutions Multiple interviewees observed that the general culture of collective accountability and responsibility was very strong. For example, when things went 'wrong' or mistakes were made, interviewees observed that project participants, in particular the two of the project leads from the Clapton Care Circle, Luke "Team Starter" and Aga "Commons Organiser" were available and willing to reflect on what went wrong and how it could be done differently in the future.
In relationship to Equal Care's flexibility and responsiveness to change, one participant observed that this was restricted by how small the project still is:
I know this sounds bizarre but this needs to be much bigger than the paid care workers, the network needs to be much bigger than that. So that if X needs to do her exams, someone can step in to take her place.
Flexibility here is viewed here as a product of scale, of having enough people in a network that it is not reliant on any one individual. If someone has to step back or reduce their time, then someone else will be able to step in.
The Kumu map is also illuminating in relation to the 'change and innovation' Systems Outcome. The map provides a very different form of data for the purposes of evaluation. Like storytelling, the data within it is messy but it is also rich. We cannot quantify the value of any individual element because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The overall shape of the map makes visible an important feature of the project: resilience. One of the strengths of a network, compared with other structures, for example the pyramid shape of a hierarchical corporation, is that it is extremely flexible. This flexibility makes it resilient to changes over time. This is because each element has multiple different connections to other elements. If one element disappears or a connection weakens/breaks - a volunteer in a care circle no longer has time due to family issues, a food bank closes down due to lack of funding - then that element can be replaced by another connection.
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