Let’s get Stronger Together to find out what’s missing in co-production.
Written by Vicky O’Donoghue, Co-production Lead
Co-production Week 2024 kicks off on the 1st July, hosted each year by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) as a salute to the influence that co-production has in driving forward better ways of delivering services within our local communities.
The Good Practice Mentor Programme is all about sharing good practice around reaching, engaging, connecting, involving and “working with” the people that older people services are intending to support. Our experience is drawn from the national Ageing Better Programme which adopted co-production as it’s principle approach.
Our co-production toolkit Stronger Together is a legacy we are proud of! Three years on, hundreds of people have used the toolkit in some way, whether that’s to find out how we implemented co-production in practice or understand how to develop a co-production culture; downloading one or more of the learning guides that cover 9 different co-production topics.
In response to this year’s theme What’s Missing in Co-production which looks at “the need to go beyond familiar voices and increase equity and diversity” as well as thinking about “how we can have clearer definitions and language around co-production”, we wanted to highlight some of the resources within the toolkit.
Firstly, our Diversity of Inclusion Learning Guide ensuring your co-production work includes a wide range of voices and encourages in depth participation from everyone. You’ll hear how Ageing Better in Birmingham working with older people within a super diverse city, structured their programme to create a fully inclusive environment.
You will also find a practitioner guide for key inclusion practices developed by Ambition for Ageing in Greater Manchester. This guide presents case studies giving practical illustrations of working inclusively, taking “an integrated approach” to equalities work.
Exclusively for Co-production Week we are offering a free 45 minute ‘Hearing from Different Voices’ session on this very subject at 1pm on Tuesday 2nd July!
Minding your Co-production Language is one of our favourite discussion topics as we get really frustrated when trying to navigate the complicated language and jargon often used, which just alienates the people we want to involve. We co-designed a model called Co-Production from the Heart which we use in bespoke sessions to help people translate the key principles and values of co-production into their own language.
Why not come along and have a go at doing this together on Wednesday 3rd July at 10am as part of Co-production Week?
To book and take part in our ‘Getting to the Heart of Co-production as an Evolving Practice’ session follow this link.
We hope the Stronger Together Toolkit will help you explore what’s missing in your co-production good practice, and the resources help you to navigate some of the key challenges in ensuring that your approach is accessible to all who want to participate.
We offer free support to help you with your co-production conundrums, so don’t hesitate to get in touch to carry on the co-production conversation.
Email us at GPM@syha.co.uk
