Nikki Jones, Senior Involvement and Coproduction Manager at United Response, explores how co-production can move beyond involvement to recognise what everyone has to offer – creating stronger communities and fuller lives.
Over my career in social care there have been many attempts to embed co-production into everyday support within the boundaries of funding and ever-changing processes and procedures.
The Timms report and the Casey Commission are recent examples of government proposals that draw on co-production to inform policy and shape the future of social care. Alongside this, the new president of the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) has spoken about wanting to “put the social back into social care”. There is clearly a growing recognition that the future of social care is about more than services alone. But this raises a simple question: what does co-production actually mean?
Often we think about people with lived experience sitting on forums, joining working groups, attending meetings, helping shape policies or contributing to organisational decisions.
Those things matter, but they are not the heart of co-production.
Edgar Cahn, who reframed the concept in the 1990s, challenged us to begin from a different assumption: that every person has gifts, strengths and something to contribute. Rather than seeing people through the lens of need or the labels they carry, co-production recognises that better lives and stronger communities are created when everyone’s contribution is recognised and valued.
That shifts the question from ‘how do we involve people?’ to ‘how do we create the conditions for everyone to contribute what only they can?’.
As part of United Response’s new strategy, Big Lives, we have an ambition to become the most co-produced charity in the UK. The more we examine what this means, the more I find myself using the phrase ‘working together’ instead.
When people hear “working together”, they tend to think about relationships. Partnership. Shared purpose. People bringing their different experiences, strengths, skills and perspectives to solve problems together. That feels much closer to what we’re trying to achieve.
A Different Story for Social Care
One of the learnings we are shaping is the importance of language as a way to frame social care. The words we use shape how we think. How we think shapes how we act. And how we act shapes the lives and opportunities people experience as their reality.
If co-production was truly integrated across health and social care, then in ten years’ time there would be tailored support and truly integrated communities. One major change would be in public perception. The authenticity of the narrative around people who draw on social care would tell a new story – one framed not around cost and loss, but around what we have to gain.
It would seem unthinkable that people with learning disabilities and autism were only supported to have opportunities for friendship and belonging within segregated services, rather than as valued members of their local communities. Nor would their support simply be considered in the context of supporting and saving the NHS.
Our understanding of quality would change too. Safety and compliance would always remain essential, but we would also ask different questions. Do people have people who love them? Are they connected to their communities? Do they have purpose? Friendships? Opportunities to contribute? Are they able to pursue the ambitions that matter to them? Because that is how we all judge the quality of our own lives.
Perhaps the biggest challenge is not ‘how we do co-production’. It’s learning how to see people differently. Once we recognise that everyone has something to offer – not simply needs to be met – working together becomes the obvious way forward.
Social care is no longer something that is done to or for people; it becomes something we create together. And in doing so, adult social care becomes not an end, a final destination, but a pathway to a full life filled with the same hopes, relationships and opportunities for everyone.
