For this year’s Co-production Week 2024 (1 – 5 July 2024), Disability Rights UK have published new resources which explain how organisations can ‘do’ co-production.
The ‘Co-production and Cake’ infographics liken co-production to baking a cake. DRUK say step by step guides to co-production are hard to produce because the ingredients (the people involved and their values), the method (the skills and facilities needed), and the final result (the overall output) will be different each time.
Instead, what is needed is an awareness of what co-production is and how we can avoid coercion, i.e. rather than telling someone they will have a cake and deciding the flavour for the person, organisations need to work together with people to jointly decide the flavour of the cake and how it will be decorated.
This approach ensures everyone is involved in the decision and that their voice is heard and listened to.
Co-production is about working together: it ensures an equal partnership between service providers and those using the service. If co-production is done well, it offers the chance to transform social care to a model that offers people real choice and control.
Every year, the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) hosts a national Co-production Week to celebrate the power of co-production and how it can lead to better ways of doing things in social care.
This year’s theme, ‘Co-production: What’s Missing?’, invites us to increase equity and diversity in co-production and think about how we can access better training and development, and have clear definitions and language around co-production. SCIE says by focusing on what is missing, we can spark discussions to address these gaps and improve people’s experience of co-production in social care.
Kathryn Smith, Chief Executive at SCIE, said: “When co-production works best, people who use services and carers are valued by organisations as equal partners and have influence over the decisions that are made.”
“Co-production week is a celebration of the benefits of the benefits of co-production. This is where we share good practice and the contribution that people with lived experience have made to develop better ways of doing things in social care.
“This year for co-production week, we’re focusing on what’s missing. This came from a survey that SCIE carried out last year which highlighted the areas needing greater focus. These areas are about increasing equity and diversity in co-production, showing the impact and the difference co-production makes and how we can make a good business case for it, accessing better training and development, and the need for clearer definitions and language around co-production,” she said.
Councils across the country have already begun to introduce co-production in an effort to better work with people with learning disabilities and discover what type of support works best.
For example, the My Day My Way project in Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council was developed to listen to the views of individuals, staff and their carers. The council conducted surveys to find out what is working well, what is missing and what could be done to improve day time services.
In total, 858 people responded to the survey. Around half of parents and carers said they would like more information on the available opportunities, with 90% of parents and carers saying they felt activities outside of day centres were limited.
The survey also found that most people with learning disabilities and their parents/carers wanted more opportunities for social interactions, paid employment and travel training, and better information sharing. Being safe and healthy, having access to the right support and a good place to live were also all highlighted as important to the respondents.
These survey results helped to inform the council’s approach to daytime services and what they need to do to improve the opportunities for people with learning disabilities.
This example highlights how services across the country could be improved by simply listening to the people who draw on services and acting accordingly.
“Nothing about us without us”
