Co-operative Fortnight

I attended the "Should Co-operatives Deliver Public Services" workshop at Co-operatives 2010, and here are my notes of what happened. They are not a verbatim report of the workshop but are intended to provide an overview of the themes, topics and views that were presented by the speakers at this workshop.

Speakers:

Lauire Gregory – Foster Care Cooperative
Mick Taylor – Chair Phone Co-op
Dr Sue Baines – Social Change Researcher
Mo Girach – SELDOC Founder

Chair:

Amanda Ludlow – Head of Sales and Business Development, Benenden Healthcare Society

Laurie Gregory:

• Co-operatives could provide public services as their philosophy and values fit with local government and unions.
• Some cooperatives are already delivering public services as in the case of the foster care co-op which looks after 150 children placed by 50 local authorities. Co-operatives have also been proven to work in delivering other social care services such as home care.
• However the biggest challenge will be replicating the same model across public services generally.
• The Foster Care Co-operative had just under £5 million turnover last year and is actively expanding with branches opening in Glasgow and London this summer. The plan is to extend the brand across the UK by 2011.

Sue Baines:

• Interest in the health and social care ‘personalisation’ agenda
• Shift of power and resource from the state to the individuals meaning a transfer of financial resource to the individual
• This personalisation agenda is already at pilot stage in the NHS with focus around, terminal, maternity and end of life care
• However the provider market is poorly serviced and should be made up of private companies, and not-for-profits both small and large

Mo Girach

• Certain Health and Social care is already delivered by Cooperatives
• However not all health services can be delivered by Coop’s, some can and some can’t
• The focus in all health services should be on patient care and not on profit
• In some other countries co-operatives can deliver up to 60% of the health services such as in Spain with other countries such as Brazil and Canada where a large proportion of the health services are delivered by Coops.
• The UK government needs to instil the ethos and values of cooperatives and have selected areas where they can support coops delivering services.
• However coops should take caution as giving ownership to the people does also mean giving responsibility.

Mick Taylor

It doesn’t matter who delivers the services but it’s the quality of service that is most important.
• Public services could be delivered by mutuals but would it work?
• Public services are being cut by a possible 25% so they aren’t thinking about how cooperatives could possibly help them but how they are going to make the cuts and still provide the services.
• There is an assumption that just because you are a coop that you deliver good services but this isn’t always the case, it’s the management of services provided by organisations which really counts.
• Lambeth council are looking at becoming the first Cooperative council but what does this mean?
• It would mean changing the nature of the relationships between the citizens and the local authority into cooperative ones which could be achieved through improved member engagement and issuing a social contract, and cooperative contract.
• What about the idea of civic Cooperatives where 3 or 4 councils could come together bringing police, local authorities and health services together into a co-operative structure in a singular locality where the spend for each of these services could be decided.
• This would create a total place system where local people would control and be responsible for local services.

The workshop then concluded with a debate which included:

• Issues on councils being run for the benefit of executives and not the people.
• How the voluntary and community sector have become split and are now run by managers and not the people.
• Forming workers Co-operatives.
• The danger of cooperatives, if they did start to take over public services, becoming management institutions and run for the benefit of the executives and not for the collective benefits of the citizens.