5 co-production approaches that have worked for local authorities

‘Those different moments of coming together with experts by experience need to be built into the commissioning timeline…you can’t just add something as an afterthought. We need to put our money where our mouth is institutionally, in terms of not only staffing those co-production posts, but also make sure that it’s the bread and butter of daily business as usual…’

December's Conversation on Co-production focused on co-production in Local Authorities. Here are 5 co-production approaches that have worked for local authorities:

1. Meeting people where they are

So it’s all about really listening to people, and going with a very open mind and sort of trying to reach those hard to reach groups as well, that aren’t the usual suspects, not the sort of people that you always find in sort of partnership boards. We work closely with [organisation], and with a multitude of integrated neighborhoods as well. So there’s plenty of channels for engaging with people. But we’ve been going out to the community, and going to things like knit and natter sessions, where we can find older people, faith groups, some independent living services, talking to managers and having them invite residents along to sessions that we’ve put together.

2. Adopting a strengths-based approach

It is all about having conversate meaningful conversations with people and we adopt the?appreciative inquiry approach*?that you may be aware of. And it’s just a few questions, and usually lasts about an hour with an individual. And it’s to focus on the positive as a kind of strength-based approach to what’s working for them and what they’d like to see more of, and also, of course, trying to identify what some of the gaps are. And so as a local authority commissioning team in adult social care, we’re trying to find out what the gaps are so that we can design services that meet those, those needs, those unmet needs. In a nutshell.

*(an approach to organisational change that focuses on strengths rather than on weaknesses)

3. Listening to clients

So I’ve been spending a hell of a lot of time with clients, trying to find out what’s working for them, what’s not working for them, which is surprisingly easy to do. Because I tell not long ago, I was a client myself. So they’ve employed me pretty much straight out of their service to work in their service. And I’m gathering a lot of feedback and trying to get it back to managers as sort of unfiltered as reasonably possible.

4. Meeting the needs of everyone involved

So one of the tasks that was set me when I started was to set up an engagement board. So when the council has like, strategic consultations that they need to do with local communities, there’s a group that they could reference and get to feed into those consultations. And that for me felt like a little bit one sided. So I was thinking, you know, what do people get for taking part in something like that? So thinking about bringing people together to kind of like, co-produce what that might look like? How do we work together with communities in the voluntary sector, to create a space where the council can get their needs met around consultations, but also that there’s a space where people can come to us about the things that are important to them?

5. Producing and distributing co-production resources

[Local Authority] have just produced kind of guidelines around co-producing with people. So they’ve actually got a document and a resource that’s gone out to all departments and things like that, which having looked through, it was fairly impressive, which was good.

Does your role involve co-production within a local authority?

We have developed a course just for you!

You will learn:

• The principles of co-production
• How to incentivise colleagues and beneficiaries
• How to connect as equals
• Understanding the roles and responsibilities
• How to gather evidence of co-production
• How to keep a group motivated and much more

See more details and?sign up here!

If you are wanting some pointers on getting started with co-production, check out?Expert Links videos

To hear about and join in with future conversations,?sign up to our network?and get your free tickets to join us at Conversations on Co-production?here!