Co-production in Action

Patrick Wood reflects on his experience as a member of the Integrated Personal Commissioning Evaluation Co-production Panel

In August 2016, the Department of Health commissioned an independent evaluation of Integrated Personal Commissioning (IPC), which is a new approach to joining up health and social care and other services. The evaluation was undertaken by a consortium led by SQW in partnership with SCIE, leading on the co-production side, and others.

A co-production panel ensured that the views of the public, particularly those that share characteristics with IPC users, could contribute to shaping the evaluation and test findings. The panel consisted of around 10 people who used services and carers working alongside researchers and co-production team members from SCIE and SQW.

The role of the panel included:

• Receiving and commenting on reports on the progress of the project
• Involvement in the development of research tools
• Identifying research themes from service user and carer perspectives
• Involvement in research team debrief meetings

One of the concerns of panel members was making the group accessible without oversimplifying the issues. When a person with learning difficulties commented that she had problems with the language used at one of the meetings, this was addressed by inviting her to lead a workshop on accessibility at the next one.

Sometimes, panel members were concerned with commenting on IPC in general rather than on the process of the evaluation in particular. For example, IPC struck panel members as a top down approach (which does not align with co-production principles) and it was hard to know what difference IPC had made to people who use services.

This illustrates that you might be surprised when working in a co-productive way. A key consideration for people aiming to work inclusively is how to bridge the gap between the different backgrounds and experiences of the people involved and a key question to ask is what is necessary to make working together meaningful for everyone.

Overall, the panel worked well. It was a pleasant group to be involved in (this might seem like a superficial observation but it illustrates that people were respectful of each other’s contributions). It was productive and made a difference. Most importantly, everyone acquired some new learning that can be used in other contexts.