Building a Humanity at the Heart community in Ireland
Aoife Smith and other Great Care Coop founders at a planning meeting with Brendan Martin in 2019.
Though happy enough to be an immigrant to Britain, as a citizen of the Republic of Ireland I can’t help taking particular pride and pleasure in helping to grow a community of strengths-based relational services there as well in the UK.
So I’m delighted Public World has confirmed new learning and development programmes with two truly inspiring organisations, Gheel Autism Services and Great Care Coop.
We have been supporting their growing number of self-steering teams over the past couple of years, and now they have both appointed in-house team coaches whose learning and development we are also supporting.
Both Gheel and Great Care Coop are true pioneers in their own ways, although they are at quite different points in their developments, and each has its own particular purpose and focus.
Founded in 1971 by a small group of parents of autistic people, Gheel aims to enable and support personal autonomy and quality of life. Having started in Dublin, Gheel has more recently expanded out of the Irish capital into surrounding areas, including the neighbouring counties of Kildare and Wicklow.
The name Gheel originates from the region of Geel in Belgium, where, since the 7th century, people with disabilities were supported to live in the community and not in institutions. Saint Dympna fled to Geel from Ireland and is credited with initiating this type of community living support model.
You can get a delightful feel for Gheel’s values and the fun we have working with the organisation from this short video featuring its CEO Grainne Sexton, filmed when she was Gheel’s director of practice.
Inspired by the Dutch Buurtzorg example, Gheel has also embraced Public World’s Humanity at the Heart (HATH) self-organised team work approach, which draws on our experience in partnership with Buurtzorg in a range of British health and social care settings as well as our earlier work in several other services and countries.
The more recent start-up Great Care Coop has been committed to that approach from its origins in conversations among a multinational network of care workers organised by the Migrants Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI). Frustrated both by their employment terms and conditions and by having to provide rushed care tasks in a system undermining their professional capabilities, they decided to found their own business based on shared ownership and responsibility.
Their plans secured the support of not only MRCI but also the Irish government, the EU Social Fund and other grantmakers. So now Great Care Coop is, in its own words, “a social enterprise offering a whole-person approach to senior care and sustainable jobs for carers”.
Our partnerships are based on a shared belief that, to offer a service based on the principles that inspire Gheel and GCC, professionals must themselves be supported to work with autonomy and responsibility within a clear framework of norms and standards.
That’s the basis of our support to both organisations, and it seems to have helped. As Aoife Smith, Great Care Coop’s founding CEO, puts it:
“We have worked with the Public World team since 2019 to design and launch Ireland’s first workers cooperative in home care. The guidance and support we received helped us to build the principles of self-organisation in our own home care model. They supported us at every stage from planning to piloting.”
Praising our e-learning offer as a “user-friendly learning platform to build understanding and knowledge of applying self-managed principles into your organisation,” Aoife added: “All the team in Dublin from carers to operations found it hugely insightful, practical and beneficial for our sustainability and growth.”
That’s great for us to hear, as is the verdict of Gheel’s Director of Operations, Mick Teehan, who told us: “I’m blown away by how good it is – I’m really enjoying it.”
We’re very grateful to Aoife, Mick and all their colleagues for the opportunity to support them in their vital work that inspires us. If you think we might be able to help you too, please just give us a shout.
Gheel self-organisation team training, Dublin 2023