Meet the Makers & Maintainers: Equal Care Co-op

Equal Care is one of ten community businesses funded by the Power To Change Makers & Maintainers programme, which supports community businesses who are already on a journey of creating community tech – technology that can meet their specific needs, respects their autonomy and creates value that sticks to places.

Meet Equal Care

Equal Care Co-op provides care and support at home and in the community, and is on a mission to put power in the hands of people who give and receive care across Calderdale, West Yorkshire.

Calderdale is geographically diverse, with many people who require care living in areas that are hilly, remote and difficult to access. Around 28,200 of Calderdale’s residents live in neighbourhoods ranked as being among the 10% most deprived in England, and a high proportion of pensioners live alone. An estimated 6,300 people living in the community are often or always lonely. Access to high-quality social care and support is therefore vital.

The idea for Equal Care came about in response to fundamental flaws in the social care system, including staff shortages, low pay and an imbalance of power – whereby people receiving care often have little choice or control over what their care looks like.

It rarely, if ever makes sense, for example, for a person living with dementia to receive care and support from multiple visiting carers, often different people each day and throughout the week. People receiving care spoke about the difficulties of managing direct employment of workers or using traditional agencies to get consistent care. And paid carers struggled with low wages and lack of job satisfaction.

Equal Care reinstates mutual consent as a core component of adult social care, putting power in the hands of care givers and receivers. Relationships have time and space to evolve, providing for consistency of care typically absent in models driven by time and task rotas that are dehumanising for everyone in their orbit.

How Equal Care is creating and using community tech

Social care and support technology is developing at a rapid pace. But Equal Care has found that much of the tech on the market prioritises the manager's perspective and a surveillance, 'regulation-first' culture. The companies selling it are also mostly subject to the high-growth, fast-exit rules of venture capital.

So Equal Care decided to turn this on its head. They have created a unique, co-operatively owned care platform technology, which puts the relationship between giver and receiver first, shares power and allows care and support to exist in abundance. Equal Care operates as a cooperative, encompassing people who give and receive care, families and community investors, all of whom have a voice in developing the platform.

The team started their work with a series of eight co-design workshops and fortnightly community meetings. They piloted their first local area, known as a ‘circle’, in the small village of Blackshaw Head, with members coming together to solve the care shortages on ‘the tops’: rural and difficult to access in winter. They have since expanded to three local circles and over 40 Equal Care teams working together across Calderdale.

Equal Care's platform allows those receiving care and support to choose their own ‘Team’ which they own. Team members can be drawn from family, paid workers and volunteers - whoever that individual wants to be involved with their care.

Equal Care Teams can provide everything from personal care, everyday errands and companionship to social support, advocacy and emotional help. They support adults living with chronic illnesses and disabilities through to people receiving end-of-life care. People receive support from those they know and trust, with the knowledge that professional care and support workers are paid at Real Living Wage.

“Everyone on our platform is a member of at least one community: people receiving care build their team around themselves, people giving care are supported by others in their area, those involved in running the co-op are part of communities of practice.

“These communities help us share the right information with the right people and by creating new communities, our members are empowered to take control of their own problems.”

Matt Williams, Lead Software Engineer

How community tech is strengthening local communities

By shifting the dynamics of power, and by offering an alternative model for social care and support, Equal Care is strengthening the fabric of communities across Calderdale.

Communities are more resilient because care-giving is shared across a team, and the needs of the wider community are part of a collective endeavour. The platform has enabled people who receive care to create teams that work for them, which has ensured support for members of that community that have previously been side-lined as 'too difficult' – as well as wraparound support for families and friends of those receiving care. The benefits of this extend beyond simply the individuals receiving care, contributing to positive health and wellbeing outcomes across the whole community.

Equal Care’s platform works for caregivers too. They experience very low levels of staff turnover, fixing job roles to reflect the value of adult social care with better terms and conditions. It’s attractive to people with the right ethos, often joining the co-op with high level skills. They have also found their model has helped to break down stereotypes around care, enabling those who would otherwise not consider it as a career to take part: 40% of employees and 23% of independent workers are new to care.

Equal Care is committed to strengthening their community by diffusing the impact of what they do. For example, they actively campaign with and for the communities they work with. Recently, this included publishing a report highlighting race discrimination in council-commissioned care, which is leading to positive system change. In a similar vein, Equal Care is working to empower communities through Equal Code, an initiative to share their technological know-how for the benefit of other groups.

Equal Care has been described as a ‘sigh of relief’ for social care and support across Calderdale, with its emphasis on relational care and a genuine commitment to tilting the balance of power away from the status quo, and towards communities.

Find out more about the programme

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