Home Work (cleaning, personal care, etc.)

Increasing the prevalence of perceived quality drivers through the expansion of home care cooperatives, the adoption of cooperatives’ practices by traditional agencies, and the implementation of industry-wide policies that facilitate them may significantly improve care quality across the home care sector. 

Rachel Battles and Jason Belden, working owners of Happy Earth (a worker cooperative), discuss the reasons behind converting Happy Earth from a LLC to a worker cooperative.

Equal Care Coop and Clapton Commons are mapping a local landscape of care and support in Clapton Common, Upper Clapton. Using KUMU, a powerful system mapping platform, we are creating an interactive map that makes the often invisible grassroots networks of care and support more visible and accessible to people giving and receiving care.

Equal Care's pilot in Commons-based care in Hackney builds on five years of work developing and delivering a ‘teams model’ of home care in Calderdale, Yorkshire.

With an unprecedented 20+ new start-up home care cooperatives under development across the country, the home care cooperative sector has reached a tipping point. In this session learn from young co-ops about their reflections on the start-up experience, including what they wish they had known before, the surprises they encountered along the way, and their recommendations and tips for future start-ups.

Home Care Cooperative managers/administrators wear many hats from HR to trainer, to scheduler and marketer and more! It is a lot to manage. In this session hear from experienced administrators on how they approach time management and boundary setting and prioritization to manage the never-ending to-do list and avoid burnout.

We are in the midst of a labor force crisis in the supply of direct service workers. The home care industry experiences a 67% average annual turnover in workers. The number of workers needed to provide home care and respite is going to escalate over the next 2 decades, exacerbating the crisis. The shortage is already acute in rural areas, and worsening in urban and suburban areas as well. An emerging solution is developing across the country through Home Care worker cooperatives.

Conversations with a member of a home care worker co-op, and the co-author of a paper laying out possibilities for a federation structure for care sector cooperatives.

The home care crisis isn’t new, but it is receiving renewed attention. In several communities across the country, home care workers have come together to form worker cooperatives.

A conversation about worker co-ops with technical assistance providers in the Chicagoland area.