March webinar - Co-operation: between users and workers

We're glad to share our March webinar recording with some of the questions from those who joined us as well. Our speaker this time was Cliff Mills and the session was chaired by our own Graham.

The UK co-operative and mutual movement is best known for organisations established by customers – retail co-operative societies and building societies – although there is also a strong tradition of worker and producer co-operatives. More recently there is growing interest in organisations which recognise and accommodate more than one constituency of interest – most commonly users of a service, and employees or workers.

The Co-operative Movement had started to develop its own approach to this through multi-stakeholder co-operatives. A radically different approach was introduced in 2003 through legislation for NHS Foundation Trusts, which has given rise to another possible approach, with ownership and governance designed around having two or more categories of members.

This webinar explores different approaches in (and beyond) the context of care co-ops, the impact they can have on commitment and engagement of members as well as quality of services.

Cliff Mills is a co-operative lawyer who, as well as writing individual and model constitutions for a range of co-operative and member-based organisations, established a number of the first three waves of NHS Foundation Trusts. He has subsequently used the learning from that to develop user and worker-based ownership and governance arrangements in other sectors.

Any questions, comments, feedback? Let us know!