Danielle is the Founder and President of Home Care Workers’ Co-operative. Danielle has been in the healthcare industry in some form or another for 15+ years, and before that worked with preschool children and spent time at home raising her children. Like many women, she has been involved in a variety of sectors of the “Care Economy”. Having worked in LTC, retirement and home care previously, it was easy for Danielle to see many of the gaps in the system and she started researching ways to fix it. In 2020 Home Care Workers Co-operative was born. Being a low key worker rights advocate and seeing so many PSWs marginalized, taken advantage of and working to the point of physical and emotional exhaustion while employers were handing out bonuses to CEOs and shareholders made it painfully clear the system is broken: The knowledge and experience of PSWs and the care and dignity of clients were being ignored. There are currently two over arching flaws in the traditional care system, and that is lack of choice for clients about the type of care they receive, and lack of empowerment of workers. HCWC's coop model has addressed these issues. Danielle believes that in order to truly provide quality care to clients, we first must take care of those who are providing that care. She knows that if care workers are well taken care of and empowered in their work environment the quality of care given to clients rises. Its a win win for everyone.
