The theme for this year’s Co-production Week is ‘What’s Missing?’, which invites us to increase equity and diversity in co-production, to think about how we can better access training and development, and to have clear definitions and language around co-production.
Co-production has been a work in progress in health and social care for decades. In the late 1960s, a champion of co-production, Sherry Arnstein, created the Ladder of Participation, which defined co-production as a representation of true partnership, delegated power and citizen control – so we have been talking about what good co-production should be for a very long time.
At the heart of co-production lies a commitment to collaborate respectfully; respecting the insight, experience and expertise of people who draw on care and support. This is what motivates us to create opportunities for experts by experience to work as equal partners and colleagues throughout our whole organisation.
But even where commitment to co-production remains very real, embedding it throughout any organisation or system, allowing it to become part of our DNA, requires everyone to be willing to learn and grow.
What does ‘What’s Missing from co-production?’ mean to us?
At Brandon Trust, we are still learning and growing. In exploring ‘What’s Missing?’, we are being invited to consider who is currently involved in our co-production work and whose voices may be missing; we are being challenged to consider how we can increase equity and diversity.
I’m keen to also explore a parallel issue, which is what’s missing in our organisation that would move co-production from a set of activities to being part of our DNA.
At Brandon, we are using our organisational values to approach this transition. Being bold in taking co-production to the next level, hard-wiring it into our way of being and working at Brandon, means thinking about our leadership and our culture – this is the gap I want to address with the most urgency.
Co-production in our DNA
As well as continuing to build co-production into our programmes, projects, improvement, governance, and decision-making, I want us to be ambitious about building co-production into our leadership.
Core to the function of organisational leadership is change; change towards the future vision we want to realise, change to pursue the improved outcomes we want to deliver, change to enhance the social impact we can create. If this is the territory for leaders, then we must co-lead with people with lived experience.
In the short term, the change we want might be a decision, a solution or an improvement, so we can provide the best care and support or the best social enterprise and employment opportunities.
The only way we have any realistic chance of making changes that are genuine improvements, is through co-production. Through involving the right people, we can understand why change might be needed, which changes might help achieve better outcomes, and whether those changes have delivered the intended benefits in practice.
The more we use co-production as the means to that end, the more we understand this is the only effective way to lead change and the more, therefore, we recognise that effective change must be co-led.
How we deliver co-production at Brandon
The values that we sign up to across Brandon are useful in helping us all to play our part in making co-production our default approach and in integrating this into the way we lead the organisation.
Recognise
We must recognise the limitations of a narrow view or voice in any process of change or improvement. In recognising the value of a diverse voice, embedding the role of people with lived experience as our co-leaders and co-workers, we can build the right foundations for meaningful change, which then support us in achieving the best outcomes. We must be prepared to listen to views and perspectives that may differ from our own and be willing to be challenged by them. We must share a genuine commitment to being willing to respond to those voices, avoiding the tokenism that Sherry Arnstein identified in her ‘ladder’ analogy.
Challenge
In co-production we need to take positive risk. The ideas that are generated through co-production may differ from the accepted ‘norms’. It can be an exciting place that fosters a different way of thinking and inspires innovative solutions. But it means adapting and being willing to free-up our thinking to embrace new ideas.
Equip
Enabling access to co-production needs to be something that supports all participants, those with and without lived experience. This goes beyond the practical and logistical arrangements, which are essential enablers. It might involve how people are prepared to engage in the process on an equal footing, ensuring that co-workers have parity. Small symbols can be a powerful illustration of this, for example, people have the same name badges, job descriptions, or opportunities for training.
Support
Good support allows us to build confidence as well as foster community. It is within this community, where people share a common goal and mutual values, that co-production can genuinely flourish. It inevitably means an equal distribution of power, and only when we are supported to embrace this, can we move from involvement to co-production.
Involve
At Brandon, our fifth value is involve. It underpins much of our work but if we are seeking to integrate co-production into our organisational DNA, it must be a milestone rather than the destination. Now it’s time to go beyond involvement, making co-production our model of internal partnership, that characterises our leadership, our culture and our change processes as we pursue the future we want and that the people we support deserve.
Working in partnership
At Brandon, there are two equally important aspects of our co-production; one internally facing and the other, externally facing. The group of experts by experience who deliver co-production consultancy for external partners, our Adventurers, have a growing portfolio of work in research, training and education, and service improvement and development.
We are incredibly proud of the impact they achieve through their work and the way in which key partners such as the University of the West of England, have embraced co-production with the Adventurers with the same ethos that we share here at Brandon.
Their success in being experts by experience and experts in co-production outside of Brandon, is a challenge to us internally. We need their expertise to help us go further in being an organisation with co-production in our DNA and where it ceases to be an activity but becomes our identity instead.
Bring joy into your organisation with co-production
I’d like to finish by highlighting something that is not missing in co-production at Brandon.
When I see some of the best examples of our co-production there is joy in the room. People are having fun, and enjoying working alongside people with different strengths, insights and views.
From a leadership perspective, I am confident that we get the most out of everyone when they are enjoying themselves – if joy is missing from your workplace, then co-production may have a lot to offer!
Helen England
Chief Executive
