Equal Care's Platform

Equal Care was founded as a platform co-operative: a form of co-op with a democratically owned and governed digital business model. Platform co-ops typically operate through digital tools such as websites, mobile apps or other online services.

In Equal Care’s case, this takes the shape of our platform: a unified set of services, designed and built largely in-house, that works across desktop and mobile. The platform underpins much of our care model and includes the following key features:

Core Features

• User profiles Highly detailed profiles for people who give and receive care, covering a wide range of needs, preferences, and interests.

• Teams Designed and built to enable Equal Care teams to function, assign roles and responsibilities, meet, communicate and give care and support.

• Matching A matching system that connects people based on their specific needs and preferences to help them form a care Team.

• Appointment management A calendar-based tool for managing care appointments, integrated with our financial system to ensure that care receivers are charged correctly and care workers are paid accurately.

• Advanced data privacy model Designed to securely handle sensitive personal data, our platform supports a flexible privacy system that respects individuals’ preferences and complies with regulations.

• Instant, secure communication We’ve integrated the open-source messaging tool Rocket.Chat to provide easy and secure communication across Teams.

• Financial management A robust and fully featured system for managing both individual and Team finances. This includes invoicing, payments, income tracking, and tailored tax advice for care workers.

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Equal Care continues to develop and improve the platform based on co-production principles. We work closely with a broad range of members - people giving care, people receiving care, families, volunteers and administrators - to gather requirements, co-design new features, and provide feedback and testing ahead of each release.

We are committed to sharing this platform with other co-operatives and care organisations as it evolves. We hope it can become a shared digital infrastructure for a growing ecosystem of people-powered care.

👉 You can see the login for the platform here. 📧 For more information and to explore making use of the platform for your own project, contact [email protected]

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Key Characteristics of Platform Co-operatives

Ownership and Governance

• Platform co-ops are collectively owned and democratically controlled by their members: including workers, service users, volunteers and other stakeholders.

• They follow cooperative principles, emphasising shared ownership and participatory decision-making in how the platform is developed and run.

Benefits Over Traditional Platforms

• Fair working conditions Platform co-ops prioritise the well-being of workers and users over profits for shareholders.

• Equitable profit distribution Earnings are shared more fairly among members, rather than concentrated among a small group of investors.

• Democratic control Members have a real say in how the platform operates: from policies and features to how data is used.

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A Better Alternative to Platform Capitalism

Platform co-operatives like Equal Care offer a powerful alternative to venture capital-funded digital platforms. Where traditional platforms often rely on worker precarity, data extraction and profit maximisation, platform co-ops are grounded in equity, care and trust.

They aim to transform the way we think about technology and care: not as commodities, but as co-owned assets that we can build and steward together.