Co-production and leaving care - the road to amazing

By Matt Langsford, Expert Advisor, New Belongings Project. 

Co-production has been a pivotal part of the New Belongings project to improve support for care leavers. It has co-production at the heart of everything it does and without co-production it wouldn't have achieved the amazing things it has achieve.

The guiding principles of co-production - equality, diversity, accessibility and reciprocity - have helped local authorities to make the cultural change to enable the co-production of services being delivered to care leavers.

And the benefits of this way of working couldn't be greater. The local authorities involved are now providing enhanced and more effective services that meet the needs of young people who are leaving care. The local authorities are now benefiting too: while they had to put in funding at the start to make co-production happen, they are now achieving savings and reduced costs as a result of working this way.

As a care leaver myself, I think it is imperative that the co-production of services continues on this trajectory. It's the only way to ensure that young people receive the help and support they need for them to lead successful lives and be active members of society.

I am really excited by SCIE's first ever national Co-production Week and Festival as this gives others the opportunity to learn from actual experiences of working in a co-productive way. And I believe this will inspire others to start on the journey of co- producing services with their service users.

The opportunity to celebrate the successes of co-production will give a boost to its long term success in all health and social care sectors and also to inspire others to start down the road to co-producing services.