Social Care Community of Practice

 June Invitation only

The next Social Care Community of Practice will be held on Wednesday, 21 June 2023, 9:00 am – 10:30 am AEST.

RSVP essential: Please RSVP before Monday, 19 June 2023. Please email Nicole Vlakic to apply to join the Social Care Community of Practice.

Guest speakers

The BCCM has invited Katrina Kazda, Program Director, Home Care, The ICA Group and Adria Powell (TBC), CEO Co-operative Home Care Associates, to share the US co-operative journey to establish a network of worker owned home care co-operatives. Katrina and Adria have made a significant contribution in establishing the Elevate Co-operative, a national secondary home care co-operative that will provide value added services to the national network of home care co-operatives across the US.

Elevate Co-operative’s mission is to drive the profitability, growth and influence of home care cooperatives for the mutual benefit of caregivers and clients. Elevate Co-operative is built upon the culture of best practice sharing and peer learning, elevating what’s already been accomplished through enhanced cross-cooperative collaboration to take the model to the next level. In the US, there are 17 home care cooperatives in operation across nine states and Puerto Rico, employing over 2500 caregivers, and over a dozen new start-up initiatives underway in as many states.

Katrina Kazda
Program Director, ICA Home Care

Katrina joined the ICA Group in January 2017 and has been leading the organisation’s home care work since. As Director of ICA’s Home Care Program, Katrina leads the development and implementation of ICA’s national home care strategy, including Elevate Cooperative, and participates in a variety of hands-on development activities, including strategic growth consulting, start-up consulting, educational programming for the National Home Care Cooperatives Conference and the National Home Care Cooperative Initiative—sector benchmarking, and more. Katrina has co-authored over a dozen research studies and articles on home care cooperative development and scale, including Profitability, Growth, and Influence: Elevating the Home Care Cooperative Sector with Formalized National Collaboration (January 2021) and The Cooperative Solution to the Caregiver Crisis: A National Strategy Analysis (January 2017).

Adria Powell
President & CEO, Cooperative Home Care Associates, Board Member, Elevate Co-operative

Adria is President and CEO of Co-operative Home Care Associates (CHCA), the largest employee-owned co-operative business in the country. Adria is responsible for the oversight of more than 2,000 home care workers and over 100 administrative staff. CHCA has been operating for 32 years and is firmly anchored in the Bronx. Adria joined the agency as a co-ordinator in 1993 and has since fulfilled progressively higher levels of responsibility. She leads the organisation with the belief that investing in the home care workforce will result in quality outcomes and higher consumer satisfaction.

Facilitators

The BCCM’s CEO, Melina Morrison and Care Together Program Director, Gillian McFee, will facilitate this discussion with Elevate Co-operative along with Q&A from attendees. We will also provide a Care Together Program update.

Meeting agenda

1. Welcome to Country

Uncle Ray Minniecon (TBC), Executive Member, Peoples’ Organisation Australia (IPO) and Care Together Program Advisory – Subject Matter expert

2. Care Together Program Update

Melina Morrison, CEO, BCCM

3. Care Together Program – Why the secondary co-operatives are important in regional, rural and remote areas.

George Masri, Assistant Secretary (TBC), Thin Markets Branch, Indigenous & Thin Markets, Dept of Health, and Aged Care

4. Introducing Secondary Co-operatives

Michael Pilbrow, Director & Chairman, Strategic Development Group

Angela Yee, CEO SILC

5. Co-operatives supporting other co-operatives – Introducing the Elevate Co-operative

Introduced by Gillian McFee, Program Director, Care Together

Guest Speakers:

Katrina Kazda, Program Director, Home Care, The ICA Group

Adria Powell (TBC), CEO Co-operative Home Care Associates (New York/Bronx) and board member of the Elevate Co-operative

Angela Yee, CEO SILC

6. Interactive discussion and questions to speakers

Facilitated by Gillian McFee

7. Closing comments

Next Community of Practice – Wednesday, 30 August 2023

About the Social Care CoP

The Social Care CoP is a series of online meetings and events designed to develop a network of people and enterprises interested in business model innovation involving new models of ownership that empower consumers and workers in social care. These collaborative meetings enable the sharing of information and resources about co-operatives and mutual enterprises, fostering a spirit of self-help and innovation in social care. Being part of the CoP is an opportunity to learn from other co-operatives and mutuals both in Australia and overseas.

Emerging from the Action to Empower Report and Roundtable held on 25 August 2021, the CoP is designed to share ideas and learn from co-op experts about how the co-operative and mutual business model can help transform social care services.

If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to contact Nicole Vlakic.

We hope you can join us on Wednesday, 21 June 2023 from 9:00 am – 11:00 am AEDT.