Project background
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Equal Care was launched in 2018 by Emma Back and Kate Hammon in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, as an innovative not-for-profit platform co-operative designed to tackle fundamental flaws in social care.
The principles of the model have three core objectives: to put the relationship between giver and receiver above all else, to share power, and to allow care and support to flourish.
This produces resilient, trusting, long-term relationships built upon mutual consent that deliver higher wages to workers, economic rates to people getting support, and much better quality care than traditional care agencies.
Equal Care is a multi-stakeholder co-op, owned by four different classes of members: Supported Members, Advocate Members (friends and family), Worker Members and Investor Members (the latter with a 10% limitation on the vote share).
Starting from the co-op governance structure all the way through to the day to day caregiving, Equal Care is designed to put power in the hands of those who matter most - the people who give and receive care and support.
Equal Care's unique approach has required an equally unique technology platform to support our members and services.
Despite care and support technology developing rapidly, we found that many of the products available don't remove intrinsic biases that negatively affect those involved in the front line of care. They prioritise the manager's perspective and surveillance, producing a 'regulation-first' environment. As opposed to our co-operative not-for-profit approach, the companies selling this "care tech" are also mainly subject to the high-growth, profit-driven, fast-exit rules of venture capital culture.
We think that co-operatively owned technology that is co-created by and accountable to members goes a long way towards tackling these problems—this is why we continue to build our own technology platform.
While Equal Care was founded in the north of England, we have always had a national outlook, with the desire to collaborate with local communities to create new circles of our co-operative across the country.
In 2021, we founded Equal Care’s London Circle, supporting local communities in forming ‘Community Care Circles’ capable of using our digital platform to build self-managing teams within their neighbourhoods.
Our work in London has delivered workshops and learning groups in relationship-centred care, commissioning innovation, sociocracy, peer support/supervision, Atlas CareMaps, asset-based community development and collaborative work platforms.
The London Circle partnered with Clapton Commons and local residents to form The Clapton Care Circle, which has:
Engaged in social listening and care mapping with local stakeholders/community groups.
Worked with residents to co-produce activities at a local sheltered housing linking local people, places and care assets.
Built equal care teams, enabling a local elder to run his own art group, a family carer to support his mother as part of a team and frail elders to access local community meals.
Assisted in setting up a Warm Welcome Space at St Thomas Church, addressing people’s heating and eating needs.
Developed an ongoing placement for UCL town planning students exploring the challenges/opportunities of commons-based care.
In 2023, the London Office of Technology and Innovation (LOTI) recognised that innovation was needed in the social care sector to address the twin pressures of reducing budgets and increasing demand.
To address this, they created the New Service Models in Social Care fund to "incentivise, select and pilot the most promising ideas for new service models." Equal Care, in collaboration with Clapton Commons and Hackney and Southwark Councils, applied and was awarded the grant to deliver a year-long pilot in the Clapton neighbourhood of Hackney to:
"Launch a home care co-operative piloting a new service model and digital platform for a community-owned and governed care service which will integrate home care, community networks, digital tools and health and social care services at a hyper-local level into a “Care Commons” so that people giving and receiving formal and informal care can have more power and control over the resources they rely upon and a better quality of life, thus preventing “down the line” care issues."
The primary deliverables of this project were:
To build and resource five self-managing equal care teams with the local community.
To bring together individuals and organisations to create a “commons” to help support care through the Clapton neighbourhood.
To develop an evaluation framework with researchers, team members, and community members to measure service outcomes and social impact.
To enhance our digital platform to help other community groups in the UK set up their own co-operative care services.
To create a service specification for local authorities to procure commons-based home care services.
And finally to:
Co-create a "playbook" for starting and growing co-operative care providers, a guide for local authorities and community groups.
This is that Playbook, and we hope you find it useful in your social care journey.
