Co-production: Why we need a festival

By Steve Palmer, SCIE communications manager 

Steve Palmer

Service users and carers used to 'give their views' but those that knew better would then go off and 'feed in' those views to make changes to social care.

It was a bit like: 'Thanks for your views.' Nowadays the relationship - between service users/carers and people who provide care and support - is much more: 'Let's sort this out together'. It's about working with people who receive care, and carers, designing services and finding out what people really want. It's called co-production. There’s a guide about it on our site. And we think it's so important that in July we're holding a Co-production Week from 4th of the month, culminating in a Co-production Festival on 7 July. 

SCIE's National Co-production Week is the first event of its kind, celebrating the benefits of co-production, sharing good practice and highlighting the contribution of people who use services and carers to developing better public services. Co-production offers the chance to transform social care and health to offer people real choice and control. We also offer training on co-production. 

Co-production is about working in equal partnership with people using services, carers, families and citizens. As my colleague Michael Turner says, 'we're not puppets on a string'. 

Co-production Week, July 2016. Because we’re not puppets on a string

By Michael Turner, SCIE Co-production support manager

So I’m working at home with lots to do to plan Co-production Week which starts on 4 July.

For a little background stimulation I stumble across a 6 Music retro concert of music from all those great Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppets shows – Thunderbirds, Stingray, Captain Scarlet – all fond favourites from my childhood.

Michael Turner 

For the concert they had brought together an orchestra of disabled and non-disabled musicians and a guest vocal from Jarvis Cocker of Blur (or is it Pulp?) The disabled musicians were from something called the Paraorchestra - the world’s first professional ensemble of disabled musicians formed for the Paralympics.

I couldn't help but think I had the perfect soundtrack for my work.

SCIE will be doing lots for Co-production Week and we hope many other organisations will use it as an opportunity to highlight what they are doing on co-production.

Our highlight will be the Festival of Co-production on Thursday 7 July for members of SCIE's Co-production Network and invited guests.

Just like the concert I was listening to, there’ll be lots of different artists working together to make it a fun and interesting celebration. But unlike the concert, we won’t be celebrating puppets who are controlled by strings with words put in their mouths.

We’ll be celebrating that people who use services aren’t puppets; they have lives and things to say for themselves – and co-production is the way to deliver the services that support people to do this. As Lady Penelope would have said in Thunderbirds, it’s going to be FAB.