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NCDF helps finance critical need for in-home rural healthcare services
Emerging and mature coops have proven invaluable for creating and retaining good jobs. Both can serve as powerful tools to leverage opportunities in tough times and tight industries. Across the country, the cooperative development centers of the Cooperation Works! network are helping working men and women start new cooperative businesses and reshape existing ones, including worker-owned healthcare provider cooperatives.
Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund (NCDF), founded in 1978 in Minneapolis, issues loans to producer, worker and consumer cooperatives in 11 states of the Upper Midwest. NCDF also provides technical assistance, training and advisory services, and is a member of Cooperation Works!
One of NCDF's recent loan disbursements was to the Circle of Care Cooperative, a home healthcare worker-owned cooperative based in Wisconsin. In addition to the $205,000 loan that enabled it to open for business, NCDF staff also assisted with the co-op's business plan.
Home healthcare is a low-profile industry, says NCDF Executive Director Margaret Lund, but its potential is sky-high as institutional care costs rise and the population ages. The caregiver co-ops are creating new jobs and making existing ones better. They offer workers' compensation to people who often do a lot of heavy lifting and provide trusted back-up when a caregiver needs someone to step in.
Co-op members form support networks to help one another deal with the challenges of doing some of society's most important work, work that is too often undervalued. Lund also notes that, as member-owners, "the co-op provides leadership opportunities for these women. The also clients have much more continuity of care because that's what really matters to the caregivers. So, when they run the agency, that's naturally a priority."
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