Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) Company Profile

About Cooperative Home Care Associates

The Bronx-based, worker-owned Cooperative Home Care Associates (CHCA) started in 1985 with 12 home health care providers, dedicated to a quality care through quality jobs mission. Today, the agency employs more than 2,050 staff, nearly all Latina and African-American women, and stands as the largest worker cooperative in the United States. By improving home care jobs, CHCA transforms challenges faced by unemployed women into sustainable opportunities for economic independence – and improves care for thousands of low-income city residents.

In the lasting recession, the Bronx continues to see unemployment rates near 14 percent, with the core neighborhoods that the agency serves seeing unemployment significantly higher. With its affiliate PHI, CHCA responds to these challenges by providing free training and guaranteed, high-quality employment for hundreds of women each year.

Recognizing that many participants face significant, compound barriers to employment, CHCA’s workforce development program provides comprehensive home health training with guaranteed jobs for graduates, targeted mentoring, and a range of supports to help individuals effectively address both professional and personal challenges as they transition to work. CHCA employees are offered full-time hours, competitive wages, overtime paid at time-and-a-half of base wage, worker ownership, peer mentoring, financial literacy training, and supervision that effectively balances coaching, support, and accountability. 

CHCA and its Board – which includes home care workers who are worker-owners – became a B Corp to bring the perspective of a low-income workforce to the growing social enterprise movement. We sought to join a vibrant group of conscious employers who are transforming the way business is conducted.

The Change We Seek®

For more than 25 years, Cooperative Home Care Associates has seen the profound effects of high-quality home health care training and job creation on the independence and quality of life of individuals and families in the Bronx. At a time of deepening need across low-income communities nationwide, CHCA and its affiliate PHI are building from its New York City base to bring the quality care through quality jobs framework to tens of thousands of workers and health care consumers across the country.

Countering an industry paradigm that regards direct-care staff as temporary and easily replaceable, these organizations are “raising the floor” for job seekers in New York and throughout the US, building career ladders for these essential workers, and redefining direct-care work as our nation ventures to ensure quality employment opportunities for its citizens.

“The Board of Directors at Cooperative Home Care Associates is honored to approve our company’s B Corporation certification,” notes Christina Taylor, one of the eight worker-owners on CHCA’s board.

“Before joining CHCA, I never would have dreamed that one day I’d be sitting on the board of a company – my company – with the chance to use my home care experience to help others and to truly have my voice be heard. This service and dedication to employees and clients is CHCA’s core product.”