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'.