National Co-production and Community Capacity Building Conference - registration now open!

20th February 2013, Herriot Watt University, Edinburgh

Hosted by the Joint Improvement Team (JIT) and supported by the Scottish Co-production Network and other national partners, this event will bring together both practitioner, user and community perspectives on achieving positive outcomes for Scotland’s individuals and communities.

With a focus on prevention and change this participative and interactive event will be of interest to strategists, practitioners, policy makers, and local organisations working towards healthier, stronger communities through co-production and community capacity building .

The event is free to those working in the statutory and non-statutory sectors including, health, social work, housing, and third and independent organisations, and to user and carer representatives.  A full programme and registration details can be found here: http://bookings.shscevents.co.uk/all/2862

**Please note - this event has now reached capacity. If you would like to be placed on a reserve list, please register at the link above and you will be notified if a place becomes available. **

Just wanted to share my thanks to everyone involved in the session in Edinburgh on the 7th.

I found the presentations from our Welsh collegues inspirational (especially those with reference to Time Banking). I am hoping to get in touch with Spice in the New Year to pick their brains... so much to learn from. 

Also great oppportuntiy to meet up with colleagues who are based a bit closer to home. Was really great nattering to Julie from the Edinburgh Time Banks. As with this type of work I feel it is so important to network, share and ultimately learn from each other.

I am working hard at spreading the Co-Productive word in Perth and Kinross through Time Banking and if anyone wants to get involved or learn more about our project, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Thanks Olivia and the rest of the team for organising a great event.

Lesley

'Just a quick but massive 'THANK YOU' to all of the Scottish network members who came to the Network event on Friday and who shared their ideas, experience and loveliness with the Wales crew. We were knocked out by you and your work, and by the warmth of the welcome(not to mention the quality of the sandwiches)!

We all had an absolutely superb time and have returned re-energised and filled with celtic bonhomie.

Please stay in touch - together we can change the world!

Diolch yn fawr.

Ruth, Phill, Rick, Constance, Claire, Jan, Tricia, Steve, Lisa, Carol, Maria, Bev.'

Have you thought about using Support Narratives in your project? 

Support Narratives are ideally suited to providing qualitative and interpretative information on project outcomes and impact.  They are about collecting stories of change in client's lives as a result of the project intervention so can pick up unexpected outcomes.  They are also a good way of supporting organisational learning and project improvement.

As well as monitoring and measuring outcomes, Support Narratives are a good way of strengthening relationships (worker/client - worker/colleague - joint working).

We are all social beings and relationships and interactions are an integral part of our lives. Relationships constantly change and they need to be nurtured and protected if they are to become and remain positive, healthy and rewarding.

Narrative in Action is running an introductory workshop to Support Narratives for Relationships. 

This workshop uses specific narrative techniques that will help you to understand the basics of the Support Narrative technique and use it to:

• Manage conflict and differences without challenging behaviour or distress
• Take ownership and responsibility
• Protect and nourish good teamwork
• Communicate and understand needs and expectations
• Identify and implement boundaries
• Share stories: from fiction to real life
• Make room for growth

This intensive workshop is a fully interactive learning experience. You will work in groups and pairs and also individually to get the maximum benefit and reach intended outcomes. A range of narrative techniques will be made available to you and you will come away with new tools at your disposal, fresh insight and energy, new perspectives and the potential for building positive and healthy relationships.

The workshop is being held in Perth, 21st January.  You can find out more at http://narrativeinaction.eventbrite.co.uk/ 

The cost of this training is £80 (normally £120). Tea/coffee and lunch are included.

Contact sarah@narrativeinaction.com if you would like to know more about how Support Narratives work.

Interesting article in last week’s Guardian Society section on Lambeth – which is apparently setting itself up as a ‘co-operative Council’.

 "We are trying to find a way to reinvent public services to make them more responsive to individual preferences and lifestyles," explains Lambeth council leader Steve Reed. "We want public services that do things with people rather than do things to people. At its core, this is about shifting power to people so they have more control over their lives."

 The components of the approach appear to include:

•  A version of participatory budgeting – for example, the youth offending team working with young ex-offenders top decide how best to spend £20,000 on prevention 
• Changing the council / service user relationship from ‘parent – child’ to ‘adult – adult’ 
• Supporting community trusts 
• Abolishing ‘silo’ departments and replacing them with ‘clusters’ 
• Co-operative commissioning, not outsourcing to the private sector

The council is a member of the Co-operative Councils network, which has 21 members. The full article can be accessed online at:

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/21/councils-adopt-co-operative-approach

Comments posted after the article suggest that the reality may not match the rhetoric, but nevertheless the Lambeth example may suggest ways in which organisations wanting to take forward a coproduction-based strategy  might go. The essence of it is very close to the description of community engagement adopted by Scotland back in 2005:

 ‘Developing and sustaining a working relationship between one or more public body and one or more community group, to help them both to understand and act on the needs or issues that the community experiences’

 But it’s none the worse for that!

We've set a date for a national conference on co-production and community capacity building hosted jointly by JIT and the Scottish Co-production Network. The event will take place in Edinburgh on Wednesday 20th February. How do you think the network should highlight the great range of co-production activity and facilitate networking at the event?

Catriona and I are delighted to be part of the nef Critical Friends Group where we can hear about what is happening in the field of co-prouction across England and Wales and where we can contribute our own information on developments in Scotland. The recent upload of the last set of discussion topics from the group onto the news section of the Co-production Scotland site highlights the areas where working together with colleagues from across the UK could give greater power to our elbow - influencing policy, changing procurement and commissioning practice in favour of co-production and, helping us all work with a common language around co-production.  We look forward to continuing to engage with this group, feeding in news from the Scottish Co-production Network and bringing information back. We are also very much looking forward to the Welsh/Scottish exchange on the 7th December and to meeting network members there, old and new!

Are you coming along to the network meeting on 7th December to take part in our Welsh-Scottish practice exchange?

You can find out more about what our Welsh colleagues are doing by visiting the All in This Together blog.

A very special welcome to our 100th member, Steven K from the Scottish Youth Parliament!

The network is really growing as is sign up for the first learning event on 9th November in Perth, so don't forget to register before the closing date this week if you want to come along - see the Events page.

Remember, you can start sharing practice and useful links in the Discussions area, don't be shy!

Olivia

Hello and a very warm welcome to you all.We're so pleased that you have signed up to the Network and hope that you will find it a friendly, informative forum and a great place to share experiences and challenges within a Scottish context.

We have a wonderful cross section of members so our Network meetings are always a rich source of new perspectives and practice exchange.We are hoping to develop Local Learning events to suit local needs as well as support larger National events and Conferences.

Your input and ideas are welcome and essential, members have already assisted in co-designing this on-line resource. We will continue to work in partnership to co-create and co-produce and co-deliver through our Network connections so please stay in touch,share your thoughts,post information,let us know what you want, need and could offer.

Looking forward to chatting with you soon in online debates and discussions and even better, to meeting you all in person at forthcoming network events.

Until then, all the best in promoting co-production principles in your work places and your communities.

Catriona & Fiona

Hi everyone,

I'll be meeting up with PLUS Perth & Kinross and their partners this week to plan the first learning event. If you are interested in helping out then please get in touch!

Registration is now open and places are limited so sign up now!

I recently talked to someone who manages a community group in Harris.  They provide services to the community as a voluntary organisation. She asked if they were coproducers as they involve the community in the design, development and evaluation of their services.  As far as I can see CoProduction relates exclusively to statutory services....is this the way it should be?

Looking forward to attending these events with Governance International and the Joint Improvement Team this week and hearing how practitioners are putting co-production into action in their areas.

For more information on the Joint Improvement Team's work on co-production visit http://www.jitscotland.org.uk/ 

As part of the Meeting the Shared Challenge national capacity building programme for community-led health, a series of case studies were produced in 2009 by Peter Taylor which highlight strategic approaches to community-led health improvement. It contains a set of learning points from the programme which will be useful for practitioners embedding co-production into practice.

http://www.scdc.org.uk/media/resources/what-we-do/mtsc/Changing%20Ideas.pdf