Title image: What is co-production and why is it important?
What does co-production look like?
To help you get your head round what co-production is and what it looks like we need to break it down into some key elements – or characteristics.
The following breakdown of co-production was initially developed by the New Economics Foundation and remains a useful means of exploring the key components of co-production.
We’ve had our friendly mascots, Co and Pro, explain these sometimes jargon-y concepts into simpler wording to make it easier to understand!
Assets: transforming the perception of people from passive recipients of services and burdens on the system into one where they are equal partners in designing and delivering services.
Service users are ‘done with’ not ‘done to’ - and are recognised and valued as equal partners.
Capacity: altering the delivery model of public services from a deficit approach to one that recognises and grow people’s capabilities and actively supports them to put them to use at an individual and community level.
All people are viewed as having strengths and abilities to help address the challenges they face. ‘What’s strong?’, not ‘What’s wrong?’
Mutuality: offering people a range of incentives to engage which enable us to work in reciprocal relationships with professionals and with each other, where there are mutual responsibilities and expectations.
Service users and service deliverers both have skills, knowledge and experience to offer that are equally recognised, valued and respected.
Networks: engaging peer and personal networks alongside professionals as the best way of transferring knowledge inside and outside of ‘services’.
Informal contacts and networks work as well as, or better than, professional networks.
Shared roles: removing tightly defined boundaries between professionals and recipients, and between producers and consumers of services, by reconfiguring the way services are developed and delivered.
There are opportunities for greater public involvement in service delivery as well as service creation and design.
Catalysts: enabling public service agencies to become facilitators of action rather than central providers themselves.
Public bodies such as Councils and Health Boards support others to lead on delivering services rather than always leading on service delivery themselves.
In order to help you map out where you are in relation to these key elements of co-production try using the NEF self-assessment toolkit (PDF) with your partners at the start of your co-production process, then re-visit it a few months down the line to see how far you’ve come!