Sarah Offley, Chief Officer at Dudley Voices for Choice, a self-advocacy charity led by people with learning disabilities, with contributions from the DVC team, explores why properly valuing lived experience expertise is essential to genuine co-production—and how unpaid or underpaid involvement risks reducing it to a tick-box exercise.
Where to start? When we were asked to write an article about co-production we did what we always do, sat down as a team and decided how we would all do it together.
Now this is not unusual for us, as a team this is the way we work, in fact I would go as far to say that nobody in our team even knows that we work ‘in a coproduced way’ because it’s the way we always work, it’s always been our way. It’s what self-advocacy is!
Co-production is not a tick box at DVC; it is a way of life. So you can imagine the confusion when we get asked if we can work with someone who has designed something or written something and it ‘needs’ to be co-produced. The fascination we have with co-production leads who are struggling to get everyone to understand the only way to work that addresses and includes everyone’s opinions and voices from the start of any process, before you have a question to ask and find solutions that we all assume and aspire to change something we feel needs addressing and of course we know the best way to do this without asking.
It stands to reason that I could not write this article on my own, so in true DVC style below are the voices of the team. Without their trust and belief in working this way, our self-advocacy charity would not be true.
Samantha says: “Co-production means to me is that when we get together to co-produce something to make a change for lots of people like the training we all do together. I have a learning disability and I am the trainer, people learn from me.”
Freya shares: “I am lucky enough to still have a voice, still have the ability to tell my story. I am lucky enough to be able to do co-production when there are others who have lost that choice forever. I don’t do self-advocacy for me, I cannot change what has already been done. But I can change the future for others.”
Matty explains: “Co-Production to me at DVC is working together with people with lived experience of a Learning Disability and/or Autism. For me it’s working directly on projects and working together to create a fully co-produced piece of work where the experts by lived experience are also paid for their time. I feel like this is what DVC does really well when making sure experts are paid and fully involved from the start.”
Cameron reflects: “Co-production, to me, is a complicated process. Many organisations say they are doing it because they believe the label will give them better recognition. This is frustrating because it dilutes the work that genuine co-production actually involves.”
Kelly adds: “It’s letting go of your assumptions and ideas before you walk into the room. Accepting that you aren’t in charge. Really listen and facilitate all contributions.”
Jo W says: “By working in co-production with individuals we are recognising them as Experts in their own lives and valuing their experience and knowledge from their own perspective.”
Lucy sums it up simply: “Together we are stronger.”
These voices show that, at DVC, co-production is not something separate or additional to the work. It is the work. It is about inclusion, trust, and working together from the very beginning, not bringing people in once decisions have already been made.
Too often, co-production is treated as something that needs to be added on, a stage in a process or a requirement to be met. But for us, it starts before there is even a process. It starts with people, with relationships, and with the understanding that everyone has something valuable to bring.
When people talk about co-production as if it is complicated or difficult to achieve, we find ourselves asking a simple question: why? If the aim is to create something that works for people, then surely the only way to do that is to work with them from the start.
Of course, this way of working requires trust. It means being open to challenge, to different perspectives, and to outcomes that may not be what you originally expected. It also means recognising that lived experience is expertise, and that expertise should be valued, respected and, importantly, paid.
For many organisations, this is where the challenge lies. It can feel uncomfortable to give up control or to move away from traditional ways of working. But without doing so, co-production risks becoming just another buzzword—something that is talked about but not truly embedded.
At DVC, we don’t see co-production as something to aspire to. It is simply how we work. It is part of our identity as a self-advocacy charity and it shapes everything we do.
So, I’m going to finish with a plea: can we just accept that co-production, the buzz word, just means together. Let’s stop dressing it up as something that needs its own box and make working together the only way of working.
Because when we do that, we are not just talking about co-production—we are actually doing it.
