By Nigel Hullah
Co-production can be described as an asset-based approach to all services, enabling people who receive or supply services to share power and responsibilities and work together in equal, reciprocal, and caring relationships.
Co-production isn’t just about services, it also includes policy and research where this negotiated shift of power reaps benefits, greater knowledge, and more accuracy in outcomes.
A different solution to meeting people’s needs and care. Co-production is about different cultures and relationships.
Co-production places people at the heart of all research, service planning, and delivery saves money and changes lives, also research produced evidence that coproduced activity, supports better relationships, and reduces stigma. (MIND) 2013
Co-production has a powerful impact on people’s sense of competency, autonomy, and relatedness and on their personal, social, and emotional capabilities.
These are all fundamental to us, and to achieve positive life outcomes, to enable well-being and achieve genuine person-centered care, policy, and value as citizens.
Society is defined by its cultures, these cultures take several organizational forms Political, Faith Based, Professional, Academic, Environmentalist, and Organizational.
Organizational culture consists of values and beliefs shared by its leaders, then shaped, shared, and reinforced in ways to shape understanding, beliefs, conduct, and perspective.
This organizational culture may be difficult to navigate, in care systems, it can result in a task-oriented structure in direct contrast to person-centered, problem-solving care.
Co-production if applied correctly can challenge and change this perspective, where the person must fit around the service rather than the service fitting around the person. Such change can be difficult and may meet considerable opposition, but good coproduction can supply a template for change management and a unique perspective to engage and promote citizen engagement and ownership.
Co-production a tool any sensible leader would use to change organisational culture to channel the way outcomes are delivered in a more responsive way to the user/client group.
‘Co-production’ is a word often used to describe the creation of a dialogical space where the service user, family members, carers and service providers enter a collaborative partnership to improve their own care and service provision.
Co-production should by now be a cornerstone in the delivery of a dementia-oriented services for people affected by dementia, in the spirit and the practical delivery of the of the various Human Rights and Equality Laws across Europe. When implemented correctly, the idea of co-production should have the power to achieve positive change, including making services a lot more responsive to the needs of those affected by dementia, loved ones and carers.
This negotiated shift of power should be welcomed as a way of ensuring that such relationships, based on care that is both practical and therapeutic, can flourish’.
Talking to people, understanding and being sympathetic to what they really need, and doing something about me are certain routes to supplying meaningful change.
I have seen extraordinary examples of courage, people speaking for the first time wracked by anxiety and self-doubt but doing it anyway, refusing to be defined by their diagnosis, demanding a place where decisions are made and sharing the most difficult aspects of their lives enabling a better understanding of the impact of a diagnosis.
So, I salute all of you whose voices are heard and those who will be heard in the future, those who battle daily, to make the improvements and the changes they can have.
Let’s celebrate for everybody is beyond brave in their own way our loved ones, friends advocates, and allies.
Not all superheroes wear capes not all warriors carry armour.
Courage doesn’t always roar. sometimes courage is that small voice at the end of the day that says: “I’ll try that again tomorrow “.