Co-operative Care Wagin

A Care Together Project

Co-operative Care Wagin

Location

The project is based in Wagin, about 225 km southeast of Perth in the Wheatbelt.

What is the market failure being addressed?

Wagin, a small, remote, rural town is currently serviced in a disjointed way, with some gaps, through a number of providers. These include: a ‘Home Care’ provider administered by the Wagin Shire Council, Silver Chain and Juniper, an agency of the Uniting Church, which operates Waratah Lodge residential aged care. The CommuniTEA Hub social support group, run by volunteers, affirms the need for wider care. While the Shire and other services are doing a great job, there is a growing vision to establish this new co-operative as a place-based, community-owned, cross-sector non-profit mutual business with a broader and long-term vision of connected social and health care. There is also a need to collaboratively address the difficulty in attracting, retaining and housing care workers, many of whom are stretched too thin.

What is the project seeking to achieve?

We have a vision to form a co-operative in the region that, over time, will provide integrated health, allied health and social care to older people and people living with disabilities and other care needs. We also have a commitment to grow a local workforce to provide that care and support. As such, we are seeking to establish a new co-operative committed to improving integrated social care and support for Wagin residents and surrounding rural and remote towns such as Narrogin and Darkan. The starting point for the project is to establish a concierge service as a community linkage practice. Initially run by a paid employee this will connect vulnerable people whose quality of life can improve from linkages to social support along with improved navigation to and co-ordination between services. Our longer-term objective is for the co-operative to grow and provide multi-disciplinary care and support to a larger group of people including, in time, those serviced by the NDIS.

Hear from Co-operative Care Wagin

“This project enables us to benefit from advisory and support services available through Care Together, we could otherwise not access.

“Through a staged project methodology, this will guide us in clarifying our purpose, working with key stakeholders committed to locally based services and helping us develop a plan for long term sustainability.

“We have considered other business models in rural and remote communities like ours that rely on external organisations to provide workforce and quality assurance.

“We chose the co-operative model because long term succession is built into the design and governance of a co-operative, based on shared values and principles.

“We take the long view, that we want health care services to be available for decades to come, and provided with excellence, from within our community. We want to thrive into the future and have assessed that our best option for doing this is via a co-operative.”

Project leaders

Wendy Pederick, Sally De Marni