“Embedding co-production into the operating structures of human service agencies”

Time Banking Wales

• Agency focussed community services each with their own territory of need

• Little evidence of community development• Disadvantaged communities attract significant resources and

interventions from professional agencies and still have too many intractable problems

• Why are these communities not becoming safer, healthier, greener, more skilled or more sustainable?

• The missing ingredients are collaboration and co-production which defines services users as members working together with professionals, both parties mutually engaged to build better tomorrows for the common good.

The bad old days

• Agency focussed outcomes

Example: Environment (Gellideg Forest)

Agency in Control: Service User Discontent(one way conversation)

The bad old days

• Agency focussed outcomes : Agency in control

Example: Housing and Regeneration

Option 1 Demolition

Option 2 RenovationChange service design and service delivery

10 years after

The Big Divide

“We are dealing with people who have no initiative or civic pride” Newcastle Chief Planning Officer 1983

“Whatever we do for them they are never satisfied”Merthyr Planning Department

The ‘old’ professional agency/need driven model of public services

Community

Government

ProfessionalAgency

Person inNeed

Contribution via taxation

Funding for services

Assessment and support

Consumer

ClientCustomer

Beneficiary

Service User

The good new days

• Citizen’s voice

Example: Meals on Wheels

Change service design and service delivery

Citizen in Control: Meals on Legs

The Good New Days

• Citizen’s voice

Example: Domiciliary Care Support

Change service design and service delivery

Citizen in Control: Localised Care Support

Better Outcomes for Citizens

Co-production goes well beyond the idea of service user involvement. Co-production dissolves the distinction between providers and users of services, it offers to transform the dynamic between the professional and service user, putting an end to ‘them and us’. Participants are no longer ‘providers’ or ‘users’ instead people pool different kinds of knowledge and skills based on professional learning and lived experience to co-produce well being. A mutual partnership, citizens and agencies in MUTUAL CONTROL actively working together to collectively CO-PRODUCE mutually agreed outcomes.

Community

MemberCitizen

Professional AgencyContribution

via subscription

MutualismCo-production of services

Funding for co-productionof services

The Old Agencies – a trip back in time

Building Better Tomorrows1 Commissioning agents write co-production into their

service level agreements.2 Delivery agents become the ‘new social care mutuals’

which aim;• To be value-driven with mutuality at the core of their

operating structure• To be member focussed • To foster a culture where members relate to professionals

as part of a mutual concern, having a strong sense that they own and belong to the concern

• To promote and develop life long learning for members• To value and utilise the abilities of members

Building Better Tomorrows

• To listen and respond to the voice of members, to shape the design, delivery and improvement of services

• To support members and their supportive relatives develop a real sense of being a part of the community, its heritage (the best of the past) culture and citizenship.

• To treat all members with dignity and respect• To ensure that all members have access to new

technologies• To lead and build a federation with third and public sector

organisations in a locality, providing opportunities for members to become change agents for the co-production of ‘a new public good’

Together we can: the spirit of mutuality“For us empowerment meant the

use of collective action to transform society and so lift all of us

together”

Aneurin Bevan