[Silver Award] Carepool-Home (family interaction, sharing, barrier-free care)
Carepool—家（家庭互动、分享、无障碍护理）
Carepool-Home (family interaction, sharing, barrier-free care)
院校 / 英国伦敦皇家艺术学院
Colleges Royal College of Art, London, UK
Team members Apichaya Namalieng, Pratiti Sadani, Abhipsha Ray, Kasia Bruzda
作品说明
Carepool 团队位于英国伦敦，我们发现英国的托儿服务非常昂贵，由政府赞助的免费 解决方案的可用性有限，不足以提供全面的护理，这意味着父母经常不得不牺牲自己 的职业和收入来照顾他们的孩子，因此我们为英国父母设计了我们的服务。 Care-pool 是一个协作式托儿平台，为因托儿需求而无法保持工作与生活平衡的父母 提供服务，通过为用户提供安全的入职培训来建立信任，包括创建个人资料、背景调 查和虚拟筛选，并通过人工智能匹配系统找到兼容的家庭，形成信任和关怀的微社 区。作为回报，父母可以支持他们的微型社区，并为他们的孩子获得负担得起的优质 护理。
Design description
The Carepool team is based in London, UK, we discovered childcare in the United Kingdom is very expensive. Government-sponsored solutions are limited in availability and not enough to provide full care. This means that often parents have to compromise their careers and incomes to take care of their children. Therefore we designed our service for parents in the UK. Care-pool is a collaborative childcare platform that combats the unaffordable and lacking system, catering to parents who are unable to maintain a work-life balance due to childcare demands. We build trust by providing users with secure onboarding, including creating a personal profile, background check, and virtual screening. Through AI-enabled matching system, we find compatible families and form micro-communities that are trusted and caring. Parents can support their micro-community and receive affordable and quality care for their children in return.
Background
The UK childcare system is one of the most expensive in the world. According to data, between 2008 and 2016, the cost of childcare for 1-year-old children in the UK increased four times faster than wages, with some families bearing nearly one-third of their income to use childcare services. For many families, the burden of childcare costs has become a major obstacle to using childcare services, and some families have fallen into employment poverty as a result.
In addition to being expensive, the existing child care system lacks the flexibility to meet the demands of atypical working hours. For single parents who work shift jobs, it can be difficult to find affordable child care that can take care of their children.
In addition, British society is facing work-life balance challenges. Employers refusing requests for flexible working based on unproven business needs, unsupportive workplace cultures and a lack of knowledge on how to handle requests and provide the flexibility parents need all act as barriers to effective flexible working.
These issues not only affect parents' financial status and career development, but also have a profound impact on children's well-being and development. Children's early experiences are critical to their future development, yet high child care costs and an inflexible system can limit children's access to high-quality care and education.
Process
The team conducted a comprehensive analysis of the UK child care market. In terms of politics, the government's nanny certification, funding and policies all affect the market. At an economic level, households spend up to £210 a week, and money and time become shared currencies. Social factors include parenting conflicts, differences in needs, and community relationships. The technology aspect provides activity tracking, matching and privacy protection. The law deals with cooperation, responsibility and norms of conduct. The emotional level includes trust building and community support.
Based on a full understanding of the market environment, the team evaluated existing child care solutions on the market, including nanny cooperation platforms, from six aspects: affordability, flexibility, accessibility, sociability, reward mechanism and safety. , nanny-finding platform, collaborative child care platform, social networking platform, and government child welfare projects, etc.
Based on previous research and analysis, the team identified three core problems faced by the current child care system: first, high costs. Although private nannies are flexible, they charge up to 435 pounds per day, which is unaffordable for many families; second, It is a safety hazard. Looking for care services on Facebook groups or online messaging platforms makes it difficult to ensure the safety of children and the reliability of caregivers, which may cause tremendous stress and anxiety to parents; finally, there is insufficient flexibility and child care services Although relatively affordable, they are often more restrictive, and daycare centers often only provide services during standard working hours from 9:00 to 18:00, which cannot meet the needs of parents who need help during atypical hours.
"How can we build trust between neighborhood families, based on mutual assistance and shared time, to promote the development of child care services?" The team proposed a design hypothesis that, by encouraging cooperation and resource sharing between neighbors, is expected to alleviate families' financial burden, improve service accessibility, enhance community cohesion, and create a caring and supportive growth environment for children.
A stakeholder map describes the various types of people in a parent's network, including family, children's school, in the community, distant friends, and even work colleagues.
To gain a wider perspective, the team published a survey on the Q&A platform and found the following: Finding affordable, tailored and child-friendly childcare in London is difficult, with high costs prohibiting many families; some parents have raised concerns that The concept of cooperative custody was introduced, believing that this can save money, but it is only suitable for parents in small groups who do not work full-time; for those parents who need flexible custody services, the help of relatives and friends and mutual aid from neighbors have become valuable options.
Rokhan’s story illustrates the challenges modern freelancers face when balancing work and parenting. As a freelance creative, he works irregular hours, often requiring a significant investment of time and effort during atypical hours and client-specified schedules. At the same time, as the child's primary caregiver, Rokhan was shouldering the heavy responsibility of caring for his child, but struggled to find flexible, affordable, and reliable care services to meet his needs. He longs for a service that can understand and adapt to modern people's working lifestyle. While providing child care, it also provides parents with a mutually supportive and inclusive environment, so that they can invest time and energy while also receiving the necessary support and support. help.
Outcomes
Carepool is a collaborative child care platform designed to address the high costs and low flexibility of the current child care system, providing a new solution for parents who struggle to maintain a work-life balance. By promoting mutual aid in the community, the platform allows parents to share time and not only nurture their own children, but also help other children in the community grow, creating a diverse, inclusive and inspiring growth environment.
Carepool employs a rigorous three-tier secure onboarding process, including profile creation, background checks and online interviews, to ensure the security and reliability of the platform. The intelligent matching function helps parents find like-minded partners and form a trustworthy and caring micro-community. Parents can arrange care schedules through the platform, and while obtaining economical and high-quality care services for their children, they can also provide support for other parents in the community. The platform not only provides parents with opportunities to communicate and learn, but also creates the possibility of cross-cultural learning for children to make new friends and explore new activities.
Carepool's core value proposition is to revolutionize traditional child care services and provide parents with a more economical, flexible and safe choice. By creating a high-security online collaboration platform, Carepool enables parents to avoid paying high fees for short-term child care by finding opportunities for collective support within their communities. At the same time, Carepool works to remove the concerns and embarrassments parents have about informal, collaborative child care. The services provided by the platform are not only affordable, but also safe and reliable, allowing parents to explore new models of online collaborative child care with confidence.
Impact
The launch of the Carepool platform will have a significant positive impact on relevant parties including parents, children and children’s activity centres. Parents can save money, get flexible child care solutions, and find like-minded partners in a safe and secure environment. Children are able to make new friends, participate in sports activities, receive cross-cultural learning, and spend more quality time with their parents. Children’s activity centers and third-party organizers can also use this to develop new customer groups and expand their influence.
Carepool’s vision is to build trust among community members by facilitating the creation of micro-communities, promoting a model of sharing driven by trust, responsibility and a sense of belonging. This model is different from the traditional market economy and pays more attention to the connections between people. In today's era, we need the close-knit, mutually supportive community relationships among people in traditional societies more than ever. Carepool uses modern technology to help us re-establish this connection, taking an important step towards building a mutually supportive community in the context of the sharing economy.
Reasons for Winning
Carepool is a collaborative childcare platform that aims to promote community care and connect like-minded parents to arrange informal childcare. It matches lifestyle and schedules with parents’ needs, creating safe micro-communities to share childcare responsibilities. There was an in-depth collaboration with the family during the research process and a high level of integrity was demonstrated in the delivery of the design project, which has broad potential for promotion.
