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Working together in “Coproduction Corners”

Post updated: 20 Nov 2023

Here’s an update from Southampton Voluntary Services about coproduction in the city.

KEY POINTS:

  • Coproduction = working together as equals to develop policy, and design / deliver services
  • Attendees at a Coproduction Conversations event 28 Sept 2023, hosted at Southampton Voluntary Services, discussed coproduction over lunch.
  • People said they would like to see some form of Southampton Community of Practice, which would be “A safe place to share knowledge and support each other around coproduction”. The suggested title was “Coproduction Corner”.
  • We welcomed the insight of special guests Steve Inett from the Consultation Institute and Transition Southampton’s Liz Batten who gave us some food for thought, based on their experiences of researching and delivering projects where citizens have a strong voice.
  • The next Southampton Coproduction Corner will be on 1 December 2023 10am-1pm at October Books. Please book by contacting Rebecca Kinge or follow the link in the Southampton Voluntary Services newsletter.

SETTING THE SCENE

Coproduction is a jargon word, which is being used more and more when it comes to projects that involve statutory services such as local government and NHS, as well as local voluntary organisations, community groups and social enterprises in the city. It broadly means:

Coproduction = working together as equals to design and deliver services

People often say that many Southampton-based projects and services would benefit from being coproduced. Instead, it is often the same people/voices that design and deliver services, rather than drawing on the wide range of expertise that exists within Southampton, including the expertise of local citizens.

Coproduction Conversations Sept 2023

On 28 September 2023, 20 people got together at Southampton Voluntary Services’ offices in St Mary’s, to explore coproduction ideas. This involved people from community-based organisations, Southampton City Council and University of Southampton. Other people, including from the local NHS, were interested in attending, but could not make this particular session.

The purpose of the event was:

  • To get people together to talk about the process of coproduction, share some learning and give each other some mutual support.
  • To decide whether we would like to develop a Coproduction Community of Practice or similar.

Our discussion:

We had an agenda, which was presented like a menu, because it was a lunchtime session and people brought along food to share. See the menu here: Coproduction conversations lunch 280923

We started with a Check In, where we all introduced ourselves, and shared what makes us feel welcome in a place. This was the first time this group had come together, and for some it may be the first time they have been to this building. We shared our thoughts in a visual way:

Ideas for a warm welcome

Two people were given the opportunity to share their coproduction perspectives.

Steve Inett from the Consultation Institute, has been writing about coproduction in a series of blogs, where he explains more about how coproduction is working across the UK, and has undertaken a literature review. Associate Article: Examining Co-production Part 1 – The Right Circumstances — The Consultation Institute.

Steve’s talk included the following points said there are lots of initiatives are presented as being “coproduced” or “co-designed”, but often they fall short in terms of key elements. Plenty of good work does happen based on coproduction processes, but the learning can be lost when projects come to an end. A Community of Practice could help overcome this gap.

Steve identifies a few common areas where coproduction goes wrong:

  • POWER – participants don’t feel that there is shared/equal power. Often statutory bodies feel like they have more power than citizens.
  • EVALUATION – often projects do not decide at the beginning what success would look like, and how this should be measured.
  • PROJECT PLANNING  – can kill coproduction, because often project planning does not allow for uncertainty in the process, or flexibility of approach. Coproduction is only successful if citizens can come to the table with issues, and this may be different to what the statutory body or professionals inv0lved feels is important.
  • ASSET BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT (ABCD) approaches  i.e. recognising the strengths, experiences and knowledge of communities and their ability to design and deliver solutions, are well known to be effective. However, there is not so much evidence out there about the financial benefits of this ABCD approach, which can stop senior leaders putting resources in.

Liz Batten, from Transition Southampton and Southampton Climate Action Network, gave a local case study around how Transition Southampton ran their Annual General Meeting 2016 in a way to identify goals and priorities. The process is written up here: Imagine Southampton (transitionsouthampton.org)

Liz and her colleague, Clare Diaper, started their engagement approach with a question around imagining Southampton as you would like it to be in the future. They used World Cafe processes, so everyone had an equal say in what was important, and at the end could identify and agree people’s key priorities. The process led to some projects which responded to these priorities. For example, Clean Air Southampton was set up to address poor air quality in the city, which was a response to the priority “People, Not Cars”. And a sponsored walk along Southampton’s rivers and estuary was arranged, because people wanted to “Honour Our Waterfront”. Liz mentioned the issue of the Southampton Local Plan, and how people were feeling that it was hard to engage with (NB this event happened in 2016, so it would be interesting to review whether this is still the case, since Southampton City Council has been working hard to progress its Southampton City Vision).

Liz explained that a key learning point was to “trust the people”, as they know what matters most to them. She said, your job, as a facilitator, is to lose your own agenda, as people always know if you are pushing your own priorities. Always host with another person, not alone, so that you can create synergy between you and spark off each other.

Discussion about our experiences of coproduction

We then spread into small groups and people talked about our experiences of coproduction. Some questions were asked as a starter for conversation:

  • What are the key ingredients of good coproduction?
  • Let’s gather together some examples of good coproduction in Southampton
  • What can we learn from elsewhere?
  • What else do we need to be mindful of?

These are some of people’s thoughts on what mattered to them:

  • Think about how meetings are arranged and run such as: location, accessibility issues, status of people attending and power dynamics, the importance of active listening and hearing different perspectives, recognising that people are experts in their own lives, building strong relationships between people.
  • The importance of senior buy-in, for coproduction to be effective.
  • Some good examples include: Wessex Voices/Involving People, Breathing Spaces, Family Group Conferencing, work of Leeds City Council.
  • The different terms Co-design and Co-production can often be conflated. Steve Inett talks about this in his COPRODUCTION PART ONE blog, which includes a graphic from Nesta, which explains the difference.

What next?

We then came together as a group to talk about what should happen next.

People said they would like to see some form of Community of Practice, which would be “A safe place to share knowledge and support each other around coproduction”. The suggested title was “Coproduction Corner”. This Community of Practice would help develop a united voice in order to influence good coproduction in the city, and explore good practice together.

Anyone involved could offer to host one of these session. Southampton Voluntary Services is also happy to be a venue for future sessions.

Southampton Voluntary Services will gather together some coproduction resources and create a bookshelf of resources, that anyone can access should they wish. Various members of this Coproduction Corner network have kindly shared links to various resources. Southampton Voluntary Services will set up a webpage, to capture these.

Southampton Voluntary Services will initially hold the list of contact details (contact Rebecca Kinge at Southampton Voluntary Services). Participants will be asked if they would like to have their contact details shared.

The next Coproduction Corner session

For people who would like to get involved, the next session is on Friday 1 December 2023 10am-1pm, to coincide with the monthly Southampton Voluntary Services’ Friday Forum. PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT IS NOW FULLY BOOKED. TO BE ADDED TO THE WAITING LIST COMPLETE THIS FORM: Friday Forum – Southampton Voluntary Services (southamptonvs.org.uk)

Given the importance of  making sure that coproduction involves people with real life experience of issues, people are encouraged to reach out to local people with relevant experience, to draw new and experienced voices into the discussion e.g. if we talk about a project about housing, we would involve people who have experience of homelessness or living in poor quality, insecure housing.

Resources

Southampton Voluntary Services has been offered some funding by the University of Southampton’s New Things Fund to develop the Coproduction Corner sessions. This is with partners at the University of Southampton (Lucy Green, Matt Ryan and Ronda Gowland-Pryde) alongside community organisation Drop The Mask CIC. This will fund some pilot sessions for Coproduction Corner, including working with local community organisations to involve local people with real life experience through “Cuppa and a Chat” sessions. We will be reaching out to more potential community partners to get involved, so keep an eye on communications if this might interest you.

Training

Here are several options for training around coproduction:

Home — The Consultation Institute offers a range of training, including on coproduction and meaningful community engagement.

Here is a course that starts on 6 November: Join The Next Course | Trust The People

Get involved and stay in touch

Do you have an update that you would like to share?

Feel free to share your thoughts via the Coproduction Corner network (contact details below). Maybe you would like to write a blog about some coproduction process you are involved in, or share a link to useful resources. These can be published wherever the author feels is appropriate, with the option of including it on www.southamptonvs.org.uk

Keep updated on this via our Coproduction Corner network by:

Thank you for reading this. Do get in contact with your thoughts.

Rebecca Kinge, Southampton Voluntary Services

24/10/23 and updated 15/11/23

 

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