Equal Care

Kate Hammon

Founder Equal Care

Don’t underestimate the time it takes - time to find your people, time to have difficult conversations about power and money - or the sheer will and commitment to the values and principles to lay the foundation for the culture you want to see.
But my goodness is it worth it! As I write this we have over 80 workers and a staff turnover rate of less than 4%. That's the headline, but it's the stories that sit underneath that make it incredible.
Creating a workplace that works in a way that empowers people, supports people to work with autonomy, working from a place of trust and not risk mitigation. It is so deeply worth it to create a working environment that I had always wanted to experience but never had when working for someone else.
It is the same and more for the people receiving care using the service, seeing the difference that real choice can make when people are given power over how their care is managed; the difference it makes when family members go from being vilified to being part of the team.
All of this is why we get out of bed in the morning and do what we do. If it were easy, everyone would do it. It isn’t easy, but it is powerful.

Emma Back

Founder

The idea for Equal Care Co-op sprang from my witnessing the multiple ways in which well-intentioned systems hurt people:
A commissioner's desire for accountability can result in paper-over-people culture. A social worker's requirement for a person to receive three meals a day and get into bed safely can result in more than 20 people showing up at that person's house in the space of a week. A need for clarity in who decides what can result in a support worker feeling treated like 'scum'.
All too frequently, the cure for bad social care is cited as 'not enough money'. But more money does not transform systems. It only enables existing ones to do more of whatever it is that they're doing, for better or for worse.
To change systems, it is necessary to find first principles, to seek out purpose and set persistent intention. Then let the logistics work through after that and make technology the servant to your ends and not the master. In starting Equal Care, we took the time to do this.
It took about a year of fortnightly meetings with the founding group to uncover Equal Care's true purpose. When you use power as the lens for your understanding of social care, a lot jumps out of the background.
For example, it is not possible in a homecare setting to select who you support and who you supports you, beyond a very limited set of preferences (eg gender). It is not possible to choose and stick with someone for a long period of time, because rotas are determined at the office. And yet, relationships are incredibly potent things and a huge source of power. They produce solidarity and drive change.
The relationships that care workers have with those they support are frequently cited as the sole reason they are continuing in their role. Obviously, therefore, support for relationships needs to be supercharged.
With committed, sustainable, equitable relationships, 80% of social care's problems go away. Solidarity in labour movements comes from exactly those types of committed relationships, which build their own authority.
Compare for a moment someone receiving support from ten people a week to someone receiving support from two people a week (and the same two people in the weeks and months after that).
The usual ephemeral relationships are replaced and the decisions made by that group of three people become unassailable. Individuals who are not part of these relationships, of this team, cannot change times, change workers, change the content of those support sessions without their agreement.
These are all events that routinely happen in homecare agencies and where the idea of asking for people's consent to impose these changes is laughable. The caregiving timetable does not permit solidarity to build between those who give and those who receive support. It makes way only for sympathy and an enduring sense of helplessness.
Seeing relationships as a source of power leads us into completely different governance structures, role descriptions, policies, processes, cost allocations and outcomes for workers and supported people alike. From this one (actually quite obvious) insight a totally different experience is born. And that's not the only insight we can find when we start using power as a lens to see by!
My abiding hope for Equal Care is that the model already operating in Calderdale has a chance to grow and be adopted and owned elsewhere. My ambitious hope is that the parts of the vision that haven't yet come to fruition - relating mainly to the staggering amounts of unpaid labour that goes into keeping our care system going - get some time in the sun.

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Last updated 12 days ago

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Kate Hammon

Founder Equal Care

Don’t underestimate the time it takes - time to find your people, time to have difficult conversations about power and money - or the sheer will and commitment to the values and principles to lay the foundation for the culture you want to see.

But my goodness is it worth it! As I write this we have over 80 workers and a staff turnover rate of less than 4%. That's the headline, but it's the stories that sit underneath that make it incredible.

Creating a workplace that works in a way that empowers people, supports people to work with autonomy, working from a place of trust and not risk mitigation. It is so deeply worth it to create a working environment that I had always wanted to experience but never had when working for someone else.

It is the same and more for the people receiving care using the service, seeing the difference that real choice can make when people are given power over how their care is managed; the difference it makes when family members go from being vilified to being part of the team.

All of this is why we get out of bed in the morning and do what we do. If it were easy, everyone would do it. It isn’t easy, but it is powerful.

Emma Back

Founder

The idea for Equal Care Co-op sprang from my witnessing the multiple ways in which well-intentioned systems hurt people:

A commissioner's desire for accountability can result in paper-over-people culture. A social worker's requirement for a person to receive three meals a day and get into bed safely can result in more than 20 people showing up at that person's house in the space of a week. A need for clarity in who decides what can result in a support worker feeling treated like 'scum'.

All too frequently, the cure for bad social care is cited as 'not enough money'. But more money does not transform systems. It only enables existing ones to do more of whatever it is that they're doing, for better or for worse.

To change systems, it is necessary to find first principles, to seek out purpose and set persistent intention. Then let the logistics work through after that and make technology the servant to your ends and not the master. In starting Equal Care, we took the time to do this.

It took about a year of fortnightly meetings with the founding group to uncover Equal Care's true purpose. When you use power as the lens for your understanding of social care, a lot jumps out of the background.

For example, it is not possible in a homecare setting to select who you support and who you supports you, beyond a very limited set of preferences (eg gender). It is not possible to choose and stick with someone for a long period of time, because rotas are determined at the office. And yet, relationships are incredibly potent things and a huge source of power. They produce solidarity and drive change.

The relationships that care workers have with those they support are frequently cited as the sole reason they are continuing in their role. Obviously, therefore, support for relationships needs to be supercharged.

With committed, sustainable, equitable relationships, 80% of social care's problems go away. Solidarity in labour movements comes from exactly those types of committed relationships, which build their own authority.

Compare for a moment someone receiving support from ten people a week to someone receiving support from two people a week (and the same two people in the weeks and months after that).

The usual ephemeral relationships are replaced and the decisions made by that group of three people become unassailable. Individuals who are not part of these relationships, of this team, cannot change times, change workers, change the content of those support sessions without their agreement.

These are all events that routinely happen in homecare agencies and where the idea of asking for people's consent to impose these changes is laughable. The caregiving timetable does not permit solidarity to build between those who give and those who receive support. It makes way only for sympathy and an enduring sense of helplessness.

Seeing relationships as a source of power leads us into completely different governance structures, role descriptions, policies, processes, cost allocations and outcomes for workers and supported people alike. From this one (actually quite obvious) insight a totally different experience is born. And that's not the only insight we can find when we start using power as a lens to see by!

My abiding hope for Equal Care is that the model already operating in Calderdale has a chance to grow and be adopted and owned elsewhere. My ambitious hope is that the parts of the vision that haven't yet come to fruition - relating mainly to the staggering amounts of unpaid labour that goes into keeping our care system going - get some time in the sun.