Worker-Owned Cooperatives May Help Address Elder Care Deficit

 Model popular in other parts of the world

Newswise, February 2, 2017 – A growing elder care shortage could be eased by worker-owned cooperatives, a little-used business model that also improves the working conditions and the quality of life for caregivers.

That’s the conclusion reached by University of Georgia faculty member Rebecca Matthew and Vanessa Bransburg, a cooperative development specialist, in a recent, award-winning case study.

Matthew, an assistant professor at the UGA School of Social Work, and Bransburg, a staff member at Democracy at Work Institute in San Diego, California, looked for a successful system of home-based caring labor that puts equal emphasis on the well-being of both the care recipient and the provider.

They examined the most popular forms of paid child care—for-profit and nonprofit services—alongside worker-owned child care cooperatives.

The latter system is popular in other parts of the world, but represents a fraction of the caregiving services available in the U.S.

The cooperatives, which give employees greater control over their working conditions and a share in profits, improved the quality of life of both care recipients and providers.

As an example, they cited a case study of the Beyond Care Childcare Cooperative, an organization that provides home-based child care services to the Sunset Park community in Brooklyn, New York.

Women who joined the BCCC as worker-owners reported a 58 percent increase in hourly wages. As wages grew, more than half of the employee-owners—primarily immigrant women—were able to reduce their work hours, enabling them to spend more time with their own children and families.

The model could also be applied to the provision of elder care, said Matthew and Bransburg, pointing out that nearly half of people employed in that job sector rely on public benefits such as Medicaid to support themselves and their families.

Since home care for the elderly is expected to grow from nearly 40 million jobs now to 73 million by 2030, the potential impact of worker-owned cooperatives could be huge.

“Worker-owned cooperatives provide a truly promising alternative through which to provide quality jobs and care,” said Matthew.

The study, “Democratizing Caring Labor: The Promise Of Community-Based, Worker-Owned Childcare Cooperatives,” won the Council for Social Work Education’s 2016 Feminist Manuscript Award. It was published online before print in Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work.

UGA School of Social Work
Founded in 1964, the University of Georgia School of Social Work provides instruction, research and hands-on training in social work practice while emphasizing the integration of social work with social justice. For more information, see http://ssw.uga.edu/. 

Downsizing the Elderly Smoothly is Possible with FairSplit.com and SeniorMoves.org

Downsizing is hard, indeed often the biggest move of a person's life, and comes when one is least able to do it for themselves. SeniorMoves.org's on-location services combined with the new FairSplit.com web based division tools combine to ease the burden on families in the Phoenix area

November 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- "It's hard to begin downsizing when you're not sure what needs to be done or who is going to do them", explained Tony Siebers of SeniorMoves.org in Mesa, Arizona. 

 "That was the explanation that Nancy, my Mother-In-Law, shared with me when asked why we had not downsized Grandma Doriene, "Gigi", earlier", Tony explained about his own family experience. 

The prospect of downsizing an aging loved one seems bittersweet at best.  Many families now look for professional senior move management services.

Being a former military officer and corporate strategy executive for large companies, Tony knew the tragic outcomes of being paralyzed with indecision. 

He decided to focus his attention on the problems of his own family's move, learned from those, and started SeniorMoves.org after receiving training from the National Association of Senior Moves Managers.

With training as a Senior Move Manager, Tony had a methodology to focus on the physical and emotional needs of seniors and their families who are downsizing and help move them forward. 

In addition to fears of change, his own family was literally spread out across the world; from Japan to Washington D.C. to California.  While all understood that Gigi would move in with her daughter when the time came, the biggest emotional hurdle was what to do with the things that were no longer needed by Gigi. 

Conflicting family opinions on who wanted and should get what made downsizing complex.  Adding to that challenge, Gigi literally asked Tony, "How can I be equitable?". 

FairSplit.com turned out to have the solution and became SeniorMoves' first technology partner.  Their new web based technology platform allowed full engagement of the family and transparency to the downsizing process. Their slogan, "divide things, not families" fit well with the SeniorMoves' philosophy.

The process included consideration for emotional and monetary values. FairSplit.com founder David MacMahan says: "We provide a centralized location for everything online and a process to get things listed, sorted and fairly divided so the house can be cleared and the move made."

FairSplit.com, started as an easy to use web-based platform to share Gigi's belongings and gauge family interest in her heirlooms.  

Through the FairSplit process, Senior Moves quickly confirmed suspicions that the family did not want much, but instead felt that most of the items should be sold for Gigi's retirement fund. 

Gigi's family opted not to assign market values (i.e. eBay, Craigslist, etc.) for her belongings, but other families using Fairsplit.com have chosen to include and track market values.

Today, Fairsplit.com is a significant part of the Senior Moves' downsizing process.  When mobility and distance are core concerns, the online solution bridges gaps found in many families when trying to accomplish the move of a lifetime for someone mostly limited to a chair.

SeniorMoves.org has multiple Senior Move Managers, referred to as Senior Advocates, and together, they offer senior downsizing, transition planning and move management solutions to the Phoenix-Metro market. 

Experienced in space planning, de-cluttering, packing and moving, the team specializes in families who are geographically separated from each other.  Tel: (480) 648-5079 Email: info@SeniorMoves.org,  www.seniormoves.org

FairSplit.com is a California company focused on improving the process of listing and peacefully dividing the assets in death, divorce and downsizing.  Website: www.FairSplit.comEmail: 132415@email4pr.com Tel: 855-58-ESTATe (855-583-7828) David MacMahan is founder and CEO, and a lifetime entrepreneur creatively solving pain with technology.