Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Care Team

[Grace Kim (grace]

Responding to Charla Lowery:
Does any community have a care team where they reach out to community members 
on a regular basis to see how they?re doing and to see if they need anything? 
If so,?I would be interested to find out more about their team and if they have 
anything in writing that they might share with us, Heartwood Commons in 
Tulsa,?Oklahoma.
_______

Capitol Hill Urban Cohousing (CHUC) has been living together in the same 
building for 4 years. And while we had a community life team, and ppl were 
organically checking in during meals and other social events pre-covid; we 
decided post-covid to be really intentional about this.

We don't have a committee per se.  
When our "stay home" orders went into effect in WA state (early March), we were 
meeting twice weekly via Zoom. After a couple of months we went to weekly, and 
a month and half after that, we went to monthly (which was our normal cadence).
During the weekly meetings, we did 2-3 check-ins where we simply went in rounds 
and discussed how we were feeling.
It was helpful/useful to understand the level of anxiety we were each 
experiencing around Covid-19, job/financial situations, safety/security around 
the building/neighborhood with occupied protests outside our doors. I should 
note that there are only 9 households (17 adults) - all of us participate at 
meetings, but that is only 17 ppl to do a full round - so its manageable to do 
that 1-2 times within a 2-hour meeting.

We also started a "community support fund" during that time - a pot of money 
that only the treasurer has knowledge of. Anonymous donations could be made to 
the fund. And households could request money from the fund (no questions 
asked). The intent was that if anyone was experiencing financial hardships, 
that there was a safety net without questions asked. The treasurer is tasked 
with reporting the balance of the fund on a regular basis so people knew 
whether it needed replenishing, or if there was any funds that could be 
requested.

I think it wouldn't hurt for a larger community to have a team/point person to 
do this check-in on a regular basis.

Or you could go to a buddy system (pair up households) - so if someone is 
experiencing a hardship that requires community support, but doesn't feel 
comfortable asking directly, they could talk to their buddy household - who 
could manage the ask/coordination of services for the family.  i.e., family has 
a member who has extreme medical condition and needs support for meals and 
rides to hospital. The buddy household could coordinate a list of volunteers 
for rides and meals and check in with family regularly to report back to 
community about additional requests or to give status updates.  This could 
relieve the family needing support from a lot of unnecessary email/conversation 
during this stressful time.




grace h. kim aia | schemata workshop, inc.
principal 
pronouns: she/her

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