Co-producing Research: How do we share power?

By Dr Gary Hickey, Senior Public Involvement Manager, INVOLVE (INVOLVE supports service user and carer involvement research) 

Gary Hickey 

Co-production, as an approach to research, is gaining traction.  At INVOLVE, in an effort to move toward clarity on what co-production means to research, we led on the development of some guidance (See here - pdf file) identifying some key principles and features involved in co-producing research.  The key principle is the ‘sharing of power’.  

The idea is that ‘the research is jointly owned and people work together to achieve a joint understanding.’  Easily said - but how do we achieve this in practice?  Research teams are often, and with all best intentions, hierarchical; with a chief investigator leading a team made up of researchers of various grades.  And how do we ensure that public members truly have a voice in decision making?  How do we also ensure that the knowledge of public members is respected and valued?

We will explore these issues in our second #How2CoPro event, Co-producing Research:  How do we share power? on 12th March. Last year the same event was such a success that we are back again with a bigger event and looking forward to learning together once more!  

Our key aim for the event is that we all share experiences, and provide practical examples, of how power can be shared in a co-produced project. We will also update you on various co-production initiatives and opportunities that we know of.  

At the event we have a range of quality speakers including Simon Denegri (National Director for Patients, Carers and the Public, National Institute for Health Research), who will update on co-production in the National Institute for Health Research; as well as a range of speakers (public members and researchers) who will share their experiences of, and techniques for, sharing power.  The event will end with a panel discussion on sharing power and will include SCIE’s Head of Co-production, Pete Fleischmann.

This event is sponsored by: Centre for Public Engagement, Kingston University and St George’s, University of London; INVOLVE; University College London Centre for Co-production in Health Research.

You can register for the event and see the agenda here. Twitter Hash Tag: #howtocopro   

Making it Real – something wonderful this way comes?

By Caroline Speirs - discussing power, which is the theme of Co-production Week 2019. Caroline is Head of Think Local Act Personal (TLAP). A longer version of this blog is on the TLAP website

‘Don’t shift power. Share it’. This sums up the thoughts of Halima Khan, from the innovation foundation Nesta. Halima believes that sharing power can open up new solutions. That’s TLAP’s intention with Making it Real. It’s our new approach to what good citizen-focused care and support should look like. It’s a framework that creates space for a different model of power – a shared power.

By virtue of a great partnership, TLAP holds a privileged position that provides us with a multi-dimensional perspective. We get to speak to national leaders and decision makers. We meet regularly with practitioners and we work up close and personal with people with lived experience via our work with the National Co-production Advisory Group. Viewed through that lens, we get to see up close the gap between the rhetoric of what ought to be supportive policy and legislation and the reality of what’s happening on the ground.

The view isn’t always a good one. We see an exhausted colleague who accesses care and support questioning what he needs to do to live his life. We see a parent who worries about a system that cannot see what her grown up daughter has to offer society, only how much she costs.

What does any of this have to do with power?

Quite a bit I think. Clearly the impact of unprecedented cuts has some role in creating a harsh gate keeping system but it would be wrong to apportion all blame at the door of austerity. We have, after all, lived through financially healthier times but processes were no less harsh and stifling when we had a bit more money in the back pocket.

The beauty and the power of Making it Real is that, applied properly, it gently encourages a shift in relations. It generates a change in focus and supports a new outlook, one that is far more about relationships than transactions. An approach focused on a conversation, on what matters, on a life not a service.

Making it Real in Manchester

I began to see what a turbo charged version of this could look like in Manchester TLAP ran a session on Making it Real at the annual conference for Directors of Adult and Children’s Social Services. Something interesting happened Some barriers were dismantled and a few roadblocks removed. Not only did the world continue to spin on its axis but it did so with gusto. The challenge now is to harness that energy and that optimism to go further and deeper and create the transformational system change we’ve spoken about for so long. I am hopeful that with the arrival of the long-awaited social care green paper, we will see a clear commitment to working in this way.

Think Local Act Personal will do everything it can to support that.