Opportunities for Innovation: Home Care Worker Cooperatives

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. In these cooperatives, the home care workers own and govern their own businesses and experience only a 30% average annual caregiver turnover. This webinar explored the reach of current home care cooperatives, their appeal for rural areas, the challenges they face in expanding to more areas of the country, and the ways that Lifespan Respite grantees, their partners and others might support their expansion.

Presenters

Margaret Bau, Cooperative Development Specialist at USDA Rural Development in Wisconsin

Margaret Bau has been a Cooperative Development Specialist with USDA Rural Development since 1998. She has assisted in the formation of over 30 cooperatives across her home state of Wisconsin in sectors as diverse as long term care, distributing local foods into regional institutions, arts marketing and galleries, conventional groceries, housing, disability support services, and converting existing businesses into employee ownership. Margaret organized Cooperative Care, the country’s first rural home care workers co-op. Harvard University named Cooperative Care a finalist in the prestigious 2004 Innovations in American Government award.

Joseph Lugo, Administration for Community Living, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Introductory Remarks) –

Joseph Lugo is Manager of ADRC/No Wrong Door in the Office of Consumer Access and Self-Determination at ACL.

Resources

• Homecare Cooperative Initiative – a project of the Cooperative Development Foundation
• The Nonprofit Quarterly – Crisis in Home Health Care Will Soon Affect You: a Tiny Spark 30 minute podcast: 9-28-18 post
• Seniors Cooperative – Japanese co-op called Koreikyo