By
The Australian Centre for Social Innovation
The prototype Weavers
Caring networks in Adelaide
Government of South Australia
Description
The Weaver is a new volunteer role designed to provide tailored support to people in caring situations. Weavers are like midwives - but for caring. Weavers draw on their personal experience of caring to help carers and cared for people to: shape services, create time for themselves, activate help from friends and family and learn condition specific care strategies. Weavers are supported by: training, a professional coach, peer-to-peer learning lunches and a web application that enables distributed volunteering. Weavers aims to improve wellbeing for carers and cared for people and delay entry into residential care.
Key Features
and/or Benefits
3 in 5 of us can expect to care for a friend, partner or relative. It’s likely this will severely impact our own health. Australia’s 2.5m carers have the lowest wellbeing of any population sub-group. One-third have ‘severe’ or ‘extremely severe’ depression and over 50% experience 'severe' or 'extremely severe' levels of stress. Poor carer health means high healthcare costs - burnt out carers mean people making an earlier entry into expensive residential homes. Something people and government want to avoid.
Over 12 months TACSI’s co-design team, with expertise in design, aged care, behaviour change and business, worked with people in caring situations to develop Weavers. We hung out with ‘positive deviants‘ to learn about strategies to balance caring with great living. We developed the idea with people stressed about caring. We ran the Weavers prototype over 22 weeks with 13 Weavers and 25 caring networks. Together we designed: Weaver and Networks recruitment, Weaver training, the coach role, the web application, and measurement. On the basis of the prototype we’ve secured funding to run Weavers in Adelaide in 2013.
Many services exist to support people in caring situations but take-up is low. The design team saw and heard how services provided information but were unable to help with decision making, how support groups were off-putting, how the word ‘carer’ is stigmatising and how respite services, whilst providing a valued break, did little to transform caring at home. 80% of the carers who used Weavers were not registered for carer support. They found Weavers attractive and effective because; there is no eligibility criteria, support comes from someone with lived caring experience, and where and when support happens is flexible.
Research suggests that 80% of baby boomers in Australia want to volunteer, the majority for social causes. This represents a significant resource to be brought to social problem solving, but many boomers we met were unattracted to existing volunteering roles. Weavers is a volunteer role that is attractive to baby boomers because it draws on an individual’s life and professional experience and there is a high degree of autonomy around work hours and location. The role is challenging and rewarding. Weavers reported feeling validated, learning new skills, making friends and making improvements to their own caring situation.
We didn’t plan to build The Loom - the Weavers web application. The opportunity emerged through co-design when we discovered the majority of Weavers were regular internet users. The Loom distributes functions that normally fall to a co-ordinator, enabling one co-ordinator to manage more Weavers, and Weavers themselves to more freely support each other. Weavers use The Loom to get background information on networks, reflect on meetings, record changes they see, and get support and ideas from other Weavers. This means Weavers is able to create more change with fewer resources and grow more easily.
