There is a persistent illusion at the heart of much policy thinking about social care: that competition sharpens quality, that markets drive efficiency, that fragmentation somehow leads to innovation. But those of us who live and lead within care know a different truth. Care does not flourish in competition. It grows in co‑operation.
That insight could not be more timely as we mark the International Day of Cooperatives on 4 July, with its theme for 2026: “Cooperatives for a peaceful world.” It is a simple phrase, but its implications are profound. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It is the presence of justice, of dignity, of interdependence. And those are precisely the values that lie at the heart of social care.
For too long, social care has been framed through the language of markets, of competing providers, transactional relationships, fragmented funding streams. It has created a system where organisations are sometimes forced into silos, where collaboration can feel like a risk rather than a strength.
Yet the reality on the ground tells a very different story.
Care is fundamentally relational. It depends on trust between staff and those they support, between families and providers, between communities and services. It thrives not when organisations guard their territory, but when they open their doors to partnership.
Indeed, the very narrative we have been seeking to build through Scottish Care’s work recognises that care is not a cost but a shared social good – “an essential investment in our national wellbeing, economy and future.” To treat that shared good as a commodity is to misunderstand its nature.
Care as Co‑production
The cooperative model offers us something richer, a way of organising care that reflects what care already is at its best. It is co‑production in its truest sense. It is staff whose insights shape not only practice but policy. It is individuals supported who are active participants in decisions about their lives. It is communities who recognise care as something that belongs to all of us.
Our own policy thinking has long called for “formal mechanisms, for cross‑sector dialogue and knowledge exchange” and for “co‑production of care strategies” involving those with lived experience. That is not peripheral to reform rather it is central to it.
And yet co‑production cannot be delivered within a fragmented, competitive mindset. It requires humility. It requires shared purpose. It requires us to move from ownership to stewardship.
If we shift our lens even slightly, we begin to see care not as a marketplace but as an ecosystem. An ecosystem of interdependence.
Within that system, the independent sector, local authorities, the NHS, third sector providers and communities themselves are not competitors but co‑creators. Each has a role. Each brings different strengths. Each depends upon the other.
This is not abstract thinking. We already know that integration sought to “shift the system from fragmented delivery to person‑centred, outcomes‑focused care” through joint planning and shared responsibility. But integration, in many ways, has been procedural rather than cultural. It has aligned structures, but it has not always transformed relationships. Cooperation asks more of us. It asks us to trust one another.
At the heart of cooperative thinking is a re‑orientation from transaction to relationship. That is perhaps the deepest challenge for social care reform.
A system built on transactions will always ask: What is the cost? A system built on relationships will instead ask: What is the value of human connection?
And that is where peace, the theme of this year’s International Day, becomes more than a global aspiration. It becomes a local, daily practice. There is peace in continuity of care. There is peace in being known by name. There is peace in the security of belonging. These are not outcomes that can be competitively tendered. They are experiences that can only be co‑created.
Care Creates… Together
The work we have been doing at Scottish Care through the Care Creates approach is already pointing us in this direction. It emphasises integration, collaboration, and the creation of “dignity, independence, skilled jobs… and thriving communities.”
But perhaps its most powerful message is implicit: that care creates because people come together. Not in isolation. Not in competition. But in shared purpose.
So, as we reflect this week, perhaps the question is not whether cooperation has a role in social care. It is whether social care can ever truly flourish without it. Because in the end, cooperation is not simply a model or a mechanism. It is a philosophy. It is a recognition that we belong to one another.
And if we are serious about building a future where care is valued, visible and viable, then we must be equally serious about building systems that reflect that truth, namely systems rooted not in rivalry, but in relationship.
The cooperative movement has always understood something that modern policy too often forgets, that is that the most enduring forms of change are not imposed from above, but grown from within communities. They are quieter. Slower, perhaps. But deeper. And in the world of care, where human lives are shaped in small acts of kindness and connection, that quietness is not weakness. It is strength.
So let us choose cooperation over competition. Not as a slogan, but as a way of being. Because in doing so, we are not only reshaping care. We are, in our own way, contributing to a more peaceful world. There is a thread that runs through.
In the words of the American poet, William Stafford in “The Way It Is”
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die: and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.
https://reflections.yale.edu/article/seeking-light-notes-hope/poem-way-it
Donald Macaskill
Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash
