We’re making a film for Co-production Week, which starts on 3rd July. We’ve just been reviewing the films as a group, including people who draw on services, to ensure that the films reflect their experience. And during this discussion, there’s been some reflection about when ‘co-production’ started. It’s likely it’s always been there in one form or another forever; but we decided that the term ‘co-production’ was probably first used, when referring to social care provision, in roughly 2008. So, about 15 years ago people started to realise that citizens don’t just exist to be ‘consulted with’ in a tick-box exercise.
Nothing about us without us
This is the eighth year in a row that we’ve put on Co-production Week. Every July we embrace the belief that people who draw on services should be central to the decisions that are made about them. The phrase ‘Nothing about us without us’ is often quoted during Co-production Week. Since 2016 the week has celebrated the benefits of co-production, shared good practice and promoted the contribution of people who use services and carers in developing better public services. Co-production is about working in equal partnership with people using services, carers, families and citizens. Co-production offers the chance to transform social care and health provision to a model that offers people real choice and control.
Each year, the week has a theme and in 2023 it’ll be ‘Co-production in the real world’. People who draw on services feel that this is an important thing to celebrate. Sometimes, service providers claim that they are ‘doing’ co-production when they aren’t. Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) talk about a Ladder of co-production, which talks about a series of steps towards full co-production in health and social care. It supports greater understanding of the various pre-steps such as ‘access’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘consultation’. Therefore, we want to see co-production happening in the real world.
We’re not invisible
One example of this is the ‘Am I invisible’ project. A group of experienced London-based self-advocates met online to discuss their own stories from the COVID-19 pandemic. The group agreed to meet again in person to create a video which captured their discussions. They put forward their suggestions for how staff at all levels could better support and be more accountable to the people that they work with in the future. They have specific advice for providers, care agencies and commissioners. The net result is that people’s lives can improve when they are co-writing the agenda rather than being part of ‘Any other business’.
And in Co-production Week 2023 we have webinar sessions, we will be using social media and we will be releasing the results of our big co-production survey that happened earlier in the year. SCIE will also be championing the week’s events being run outside of SCIE and all around the country. This all means we’ll be championing co-production in the real world.
Back to the group giving feedback on the films. Hopefully this in itself is an example of
co-production, or at least a good way up the ladder of co-production. It’s about working together as a group on the basis of equality, so that we know the films have really had a good chance to be as co-productive as possible. In this case it’s about editorial decisions in some films; but in the real world that also extends to co-production over decisions made about people’s lives; and how those lives can be improved.