The jazz standard "Now's The Time" was written by the great saxophonist Charlie Parker in 1945 as the Civil Rights Movement in the USA began to pick up steam. In our own time a movement for co-operative care is growing in energy in the UK, but like all great jazz, can take many forms and potentialities. Please come and improvise with us to discuss ways forward and co-create a strategy to build co-operative care in the UK.
A strategic roundtable discussion, seeking to bring together many voices with interest, knowledge, and expertise in the field of co-operative care, to plot a forward path to build a co-operative care sector at scale in the UK.
Shaped around three key questions:
1. Why a co-operative approach – what problems does it solve? what needs does it meet?
2. What is the opportunity for co-operative care?
3. What are the barriers to developing co-operative care at scale?
In considering these issues our aim for the session is to set out a strategic pathway towards the creation of a substantial co-operative care sector for the UK, and agree next steps to move us towards that goal.
Background
Over the last two years the team behind Co-operative Care Colne Valley has been working towards the launch of a multistakeholder co-op that will deliver a blended mix of CQC-regulated and broader social care services to its local community in West Yorkshire. As we enter Co-operatives Fortnight we're ready to launch a community share offer to raise £150K in start-up capital, and will begin trading in late summer.
A key element of the organisation is a piece of work (funded by Power to Change) designed to enable the co-operative care sector to grow rapidly through a process of replication and federation – a classic scaling strategy for co-operative enterprise. Even before we've commenced operations we have seen strong interest from across the country. Our vision is of a network of many small place-based community co-operatives federated together for mutual support, collectively transforming how we do social care in this country.
We are working to create a toolkit – a handbook – that will enable others to learn from our work and our mistakes along the way, and build new co-operatives to serve their communities. Our first beta release of this will be launched this summer, alongside a series of online events – this being the first – to bring the people and organisations together who will co-operate to make this vision a reality.
We'll run the event on Zoom. Click on the 'Register' link to book your seat.
Photo of Charlie Parker by William P. Gottlieb - https://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/4843755786/, Public Domain, Link