Beyond involvement: The challenges and opportunities of co-production
Background to the conference
If clients are to truly be at the centre of the care and support they receive and they are to be enabled to exercise equal choice, freedom and control as anyone else, providers urgently need to develop approaches to co-production that will help them prepare for personalisation.
Client involvement has been a key issue for providers since services were first developed in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It has had many reincarnations and has encompassed tenant participation, service user initiatives and most recently client involvement and engagement. Now with personalised services around the corner, ensuring that your clients or customers are at the centre of the service delivery and are shaping the kinds of services they will want to purchase is critical.
Linked to this are the particular challenges of ensuring that disabled people, who often face additional barriers to being involved, are fully enabled to have the same choices, controls and freedoms as other people.
The event
Our 2011 client involvement conference took place on 28 June in London.
The conference was a first for Sitra, with a totally new approach to how events are organised – a truly co-produced conference by Sitra and a group of service users drawn mostly from the Westminster Mental Health and Housing Service User Panel.
The day aimed to drive the personalisation agenda forward, with an emphasis on learning together from the lived experience of service users. It also featured creative input from service user groups including a performance from The Choir with No Name who have previously supported Coldplay! There was also a performance by violinists and a poetry competition.
The day presented challenge to the sector – to open up to new ways of thinking and working and embrace opportunities for change that will positively impact on people’s quality of life.
In a further effort to engage with, and encompass, the voice of service users in all that we do, Sitra have now also opened our membership service user groups.
Resources
Presentations from the day
Co-production and personalisation workshop – Charlotte Sweeney, Helen Sanderson Associates
Part 1: Download presentation (pdf)
Part 2: Download presentation (pdf)
Developing social contact workshop – John Church, Sarah James and Louise Palmer, Mind's Open Up programme in East Anglia
Download presentation (pdf)
Videos
The Choir with No Name perform with delegates (Windows Movie Player)
Interview – (Windows Movie Player)
Jane Garnham, Sitra Associate and Facilitator of the Westminster Service User Mental Health and Housing Panel in conversation with Stephen Paisley, a member of the panel and Westminster LINk and also part of Sitra's Beyond Involvement Design Team, who help co-produce the event.
Other resources
Focus on client involvement: Sitra bulletin June 2011
Read our Focus on Client involvement featured in this month's Sitra bulletin.
Download pdf
Poetry competition
Make your views heard
By Twitter to @sitrapolicy: If you have comments about the event or co-production - using the hashtags #copro2011 and/or #coproduction
Sitra membership now open to service user groups
Sitra recognise the emergence of a significant number of service user groups, and have this year introduced a new membership category for groups who can now take full advantage of all the key benefits and support that Sitra offers.
