Equal Care at the Roots of Resilience Platform Co-operatives Consortium

Equal Care at the Roots of Resilience Platform Co-operatives Consortium

We’re proud to be the UK’s first social care platform co-operative. Our digital platform, which is co-owned and co-developed by people both giving and receiving support, is part of what enables us to put power back in the hands of those individuals. At its core, it empowers people who need support to find the right individuals to give that support, and vice versa. 

But while we’re unique within the social care sector, we’re certainly not the only platform cooperative about! This was wonderfully apparent when our co-founder Emma had the recent honour of attending and speaking at the Platform Co-operatives Consortium last month.

Fun game: Where’s Emma?

Roots of Resilience

Held in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India (some distance from the from November 30 to December 2, 2023, the consortium brought together representatives from platform co-operatives around the world to discuss how co-ops can build resilience in the face of climate change and other global challenges.

Emma was invited to speak on two panels at the event: one giving examples of International Platform Co-operatives, and another titled ‘Towards a Feminist Platform Economy’. This in itself was a great reason to attend, with Emma getting the opportunity to share Equal Care’s story so far, and how being a platform co-op has informed decisions that have been taken along the way.

“It is endlessly interesting to start and be within a platform co-op as opposed to any other type of ‘gig platform’. It was wonderful to see the similarities of experience reflected in so many crosscutting co-ops from different sectors and around globally. The platform co-op movement is small but mighty and we are proud to be a part of it.”

But for us as a growing, developing co-operative, the best thing about attending the event was being able to listen to so many fascinating stories from around the world. From an Indonesian co-op exploring education justice with My Cool Class to a drivers collective fighting Uber in India the speakers gave views and insights on all dimensions of the platform economy, co-operative and not so co-operative.

Although the platform co-operatives represented at Roots of Resilience were from many sectors completely different to social care, there is a lot of common ground. In the evolving landscape of the digital economy, platform cooperatives represent a transformative alternative to traditional, profit-driven platforms. Unlike their commercially-focused counterparts, platform co-ops prioritise collective ownership, democratic governance, and equitable distribution of benefits. 

Co-owned, co-developed

This is our story too: we’re not just designing a platform that is useful, or one that helps to fix the problems that we have identified in social care. We’re not creating a set of tools in a silo and ‘springing them’ onto unsuspecting care workers, demanding that they use them. Finally, we are not developing a snazzy money-spinner that can eventually be parcelled-up and sold to the highest bidder. 

Instead, as mentioned, we are building a platform that is co-owned and co-developed by the people that use it. We establish what is useful, what works and what doesn’t by working in collaboration with people giving and receiving care. Not just because it’s an effective way of building something that works, but because it’s theirs!

By placing control and ownership in the hands of the individuals directly involved in a given platform, we, like other platform co-ops, present a powerful solution to issues of exploitation, centralised decision-making, and inequality that often characterise conventional platform structures. 

This unique approach not only challenges established norms but actively seeks to reshape industries by prioritising the well-being and empowerment of those at the core of the services provided. From our perspective, this is not something that should seem revolutionary - particularly in social care - but it is.

At our founding, we chose the platform co-operative model as a tangible solution to address the imbalances present in social care.  It offers a practical pathway to centralise choice, power, and ownership where it matters most—within the relationships between the individuals providing care and those receiving support. By placing control and decision-making capabilities directly in the hands of these key stakeholders, Equal Care Co-op is actively reshaping the dynamics of social care, fostering a more inclusive and empowering environment for all involved.

It is for this reason that we proudly attach our name and signature to the Thiruvananthapuram Declaration on A New Innovation Ecosystem for Our Collective Digital Futures. 

This declaration, which was borne out of the aforementioned event, envisions a cooperative techno-social order and advocates for a shift from extractivist digital capitalism to cooperativist platform models. Signatories commit to a five-point agenda, including promoting digital public goods, empowering the future of work through a feminist social contract, supporting digital-age reforms for cooperatives and social enterprises, fostering civic intelligence and socio-political citizenship, and ensuring a sustainable digital transition. 

We wholeheartedly support this transformative vision.