Co-pro example: Co-production as an ethical approach
Co-production can sound like just another method for project management or user engagement. Thom Stewart from An Áit Eile Cooperative shares a number of principles which are helpful in understanding co-production as an ethical approach to working with other people.
There's an old Irish joke, about asking directions to Dublin, and being told 'if you wanted to get to Dublin, you wouldn't start from here'. Similarly, co-production can involve questioning our assumptions about where we think we are, and where we all want to go.
Galway is a well-off city in some ways, but if you've the wrong problems, or it's the wrong time, or you are in the wrong shape, you may find vital services, such as urgent mental health support, very difficult to access. There's a hopelessness you only get when everything has told you that you don't fit the box correctly and cannot get the help you need, when you need it.
Sometimes a plausible promise is enough to bring people together. So, in a way, it was actually quite easy to bring our project together - the Galway Community Cafe. It was a common dream across the general community, user advocates, and the health services which recognised the need for out-of-hours care for people in distress.
Dreams are never enough - you also need "Time, Talent, and Treasure" to get anything meaningful done. So we were lucky - a local businessman pledged the Treasure of his Cafe if we could make the dream real. Many people, in the broader community and mental health services, pledged their skills, experience, and networks - their Talents. While we all know good things can take Time - our Cafe was years in the making before doors opened.
It helped us to give a ‘demonstration of the destination’ to start with - while we couldn't open a Cafe service, we could host a creative gathering in the space, inspired by lived experience of challenges, survival, and recovery, to start to give the dream substance.
For us, the defining moment which brought tangible reality to the vision was our regional mental health services resourcing our Coop to bring people together to dramatically workshop our proposed service – an event which took place through the HSE Office of Mental Health Engagement and Recovery, and which we held in the cafe venue itself to let people cocreate how it could work in the real space.
We had HSE staff pretend to present in crisis, people with experience of A&E pretending to be the cafe staff, and I've never had as much fun in my life. We also visited the Aldershot Cafe in the UK, and other areas in Ireland trying to do the same kind of thing – like a lot of co-production, there is real value when you find others who are doing what you want to do and forming connections, learning from each other.
You'll need to find appropriate ways to value lived-experience experts - it's one thing to say 'we value your opinion', but the task is to demonstrate that ethical commitment. Whether through monetary remuneration, indirect recognition and reward, or through how easy it is to reimburse a bus ticket or a cup of coffee, people involved in co-productive processes directly perceive how much their opinion is valued and the power balances, or lack thereof, in the process.
It's absolutely true that it's not all about the money - creating impact and real change in people's lives is experts’ primary intrinsic motivation. But everything that exists in organisations has a budget line item, which demonstrates how much you value those things - to your professional peers, to your funders and your managers, and to your experts.
Another awkward truth is the need to address power - which can be difficult, as many biases are unconscious, or encoded in bureaucratic procedures. For this, you need real commitment from top-level leadership and for people to step out of the professional persona, be willing to share assets, and take mutual responsibility. I like to refer to this as ‘stop fighting over the cushions and empty your pockets onto the table’ – essentially ensuring that everyone approaches the process as simply people with something to offer to help the cause.
I'd also strongly suggest you provide users with a blank canvas - let them sketch, colour in between the lines, then all autograph it together. You might also need to be a lot more accepting of unknowable outcomes than is comfortable - which can be difficult to square with management cultures of funders and providers. This means you will need insiders who will ‘swallow the risk’ – co-pro champions within organisations and services.
Lastly, I think it's best to 'start from the end and work backwards - once you know where you need to end up, you can then start your journey, knowing that when you are done, you have created something meaningful – a haven.
Thom is a founding member of An Áit Eile Cooperative and Community Co-production Network West, based in Galway, Eire. He is an advocate for peer support approaches, co-production, and user-led service design, as demonstrations of the ethos of the Cooperative Movement.