Co-production Week 2019

Co-production Week 2019

Monday 9 July 2018

Promoting co-production in the care sector

By Penny Holden, with Martin Symons, Members of the Making it Real Norfolk Board - and Mary Fisher (Making it Real Norfolk)

With special thanks to Christine Futter and Sarah Steele from Norfolk and Suffolk Care Support, for their contribution.

The recent CQC Report “Better Care in My Hands” found that people with long-term health and care needs are least likely to report feeling involved in their care and in making choices about their daily life. Making it Real Norfolk believes the best way to improve services is to ask the people who use those services what they need and how best to provide it. If co-production is taken seriously then, as Martin Symons says, “Co-production works for everyone, people feel they have choice and are in control ”.

Martin Symons and his Boma

We want to use our skills and lived experience to improve service user involvement and promote co-production in the adult care sector. We began this work at the Norfolk Care Conference in Nov 2017. Two of our members, Penny and Martin, developed an idea and have taken the lead role in promoting it. Penny says, “we are the people who currently use services, we are people who will using the services in the future and we are the people who will use services that are currently not available. We have lived experience of our own conditions, we are the experts who can help care providers to get it right. Co-production ticks all the boxes and it is the future.”

A bit about us – We are a group of people with lived experience of disability and unpaid carers. We have links to community groups, user led organisations and strategic partnerships. We work in partnership with Norfolk Adult Social Care and Norfolk County Martin Symons and his Boma Penny and Martin talking to care providers Making it Real Norfolk board meeting Council – councillors are also co-opted onto our board - so that service design reflects the voice of service users and carers.

We have teamed up with Norfolk and Suffolk Care Support (N&SCS). N&SCS support the health and social care market to deliver health and social care excellence; they do this by supporting the care market to develop skills, knowledge and values of the paid and unpaid workforce. We have worked with Norfolk & Suffolk Care Support in the past and they have a proven track record in their commitment to seeing co-production in practice. We will soon be starting work with N&SCS to coproduce a set of resources for care providers to use. The resources will highlight good practice and provide a guide to improving service user involvement for those groups identified in the CQC report who report feeling less involved in their care than other groups. 

The project also includes an event to showcase the resources to care providers. We will co-host the event with N&SCS. This will give us a chance to network with care providers and talk about ongoing involvement. Mary says, “When people are involved in shaping their care, people feel that they are part of the solution and not the problem”. Work begins on our project with care providers on 11 July 2018 and we are really excited. Wish us luck! 


Christine 

Mary 

Penny

Sarah 

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