"When coproduction is done well, everyone wins" - Reflections on #CoProWeekScot

Dawn Brown is a Development Manager for SCDC and is part of the SCN team. Here she shares her reflections on Co-production Week Scotland.

Co-Pro week was the 22nd – 26th November. A vast range of events, blogs, webinars and sessions to explore the opportunities and barriers for co-production in Scotland with inputs from colleagues in the Coproduction Network of Wales too.

From the first advisory group meeting, it was clear that this week was going to be busy! The range of topics and organisations who were keen to be involved was fabulous. Its clear that co-pro is gaining traction in a number of areas, but still has its challenges. These are my thoughts on what we explored during the course of the week and a number of events.

Calling back to Christie

Back in 2011, the Christie Commission report stated “public services are built around people and communities, their needs, aspirations, capacities and skills, and work to build up their autonomy and resilience.” This is still what coproduction strives towards.

Copro isn’t new… many organisations have been working in this way for a long time and it is embedded in their practice. Realising that engaging, involving and learning from lived experience, and sharing professional knowledge in an equal relationship can bring a wealth of experience, skills and expertise way over and above what any single organisation has the capacity to bring about on their own. Decisions are likely to be more robust with a better outcome with the range of perspectives and views brought into play during the process, ending the “them” and “us” in public services.

Coproduction can be a win-win. For organisations, access to a wider range of knowledge and skills leads to better connections, and increased sustainability. More responsive services that meet the needs of the population, delivered in creative and innovative ways, that make more sense or cut down on waste. For practitioners*, job satisfaction can increase, knowing and seeing the needs of the people they work with being met, and empowering them to take ownership, challenge their own assumptions and develop new understanding of issues can lead to more creativity in service delivery. For service users* having a sense of influence and being heard can be a welcome change. Being able to utilise lived experience to impact service design and delivery, being valued for their knowledge and experience in a meaningful way. It can also support all participants to learn new skills.

Shifting Power

Inevitably, power was a central theme to a number of the conversations, and in a number of ways. Who has the power to instigate coproduction, to decide who is engaged, how they engage and when. It’s the age old thorny issue. It can be scary to not know all the answers, and to hand over control, influence and authority to others. Many services try to justify this by muddying the waters with statutory duties, targets, resource constraints, organisational capacity, speed of change and a number of other barriers, as well as fear of the unknown (we don’t always know where we’ll end up, but we’ll end up there together) and accountability. It can also be challenging to see how to scale up and embed coproduction across a wider delivery focus, and challenging to get the right permissions within and organisation to start the process and to do things differently – as there is no point in using coproduction for it to stumble and fail when it cannot be implemented which leads to frustration and anger over time and energy expended for no reason.

Its important to realise the coproduction isn’t quick. Preparation is key to making the process as smooth as possible – identify needs, shared purpose, expectations, permissions and roles. Identifying barriers to people engaging – times of meetings, location – both in terms of accessibility of buildings and transport links, caring responsibilities, digital technology, and the possible imposition into peoples private space if using digital – not everyone has the luxury of a reliable device, broadband, and somewhere quiet to use it. 

Going forward

The discussions and papers during CoPro Week have reminded me of my privileged position, and really challenged me to think about the language we use, and how to overcome barriers to coproduction to share the impact it can have.

When coproduction is done well – everyone wins. It leads to well-managed, responsive, inclusive communities that are stronger and more cohesive.

*in this reflection, I have used the terms “practitioners” and “service users” – to me, it is not a satisfactory description and shows the tensions of language around coproduction. Ideally we should all be partners in the discussion – and equality within that space is challenging when the power to make change can belong to the organisation and coproduction is at their pace and permission.