Co-production is an ongoing way of working. It means that whenever you are building a product, service or space, the people who will use them are also involved in the process of making them. ‘Nothing about us, without us’ – at its core, that is what co-production is all about.
The benefits of co-production are there to be seen: by actively working with the people who will be using your services, you can build better products, better processes and, ultimately, deliver better outcomes for those people and end users. Committing to doing things better is an investment, not a sunk cost.
When it comes to autistic and neurodivergent people specifically, having their voices heard can make all the difference in providing the support and services they need. But there’s a vital gap: how do you move from just using co-production as a tool to establishing it as a ‘business-as-usual’ way of doing things?
Why is there a gap?
While there is much more awareness on including people, especially marginalised people, in any conversation when creating services, there can be a disconnect in how best to facilitate the process. The overall goal is for co-production to be a method that leads to actionable insights and real-world improvements.
Yet in today’s world, you can easily fall into the trap of just being ‘seen’ to do something. While, yes, organisations do have to show they’re fulfilling obligations, there’s a stark difference between simply conducting a process to meet requirements and using it to create tangible change for the better.
The NHS’ literature review on co-production highlights that:
“Services are often required to meet core targets, standards and best practice which emphasise objective processes aiming to increase efficiency and improve clinical outcomes. Therefore, those with strategic responsibilities to the organisation, [sic] tend to emphasise objective processes over the subjective experience of people with lived experience.”
This is a key point. It can be too easy to decide that co-production is too resource-intensive or impractical and therefore not do it at all, or even conduct the process and then decide not to implement participants’ suggestions because their ideas might not match your strategic targets. Even though it isn’t often deliberate, this can lose out on a wealth of value, reducing a whole way of working to a box-ticking exercise. So how can you avoid this situation?
Realising the value of co-production
It’s often tricky to get from having good intentions of co-producing to actually putting it into practice. Fortunately, from accessible communication to participant recruitment, preparation, and support, there are a whole host of practical steps you can take to conduct co-production successfully. But there’s a bigger picture here: for these steps to work, you need to adopt the mindset that sees co-production as a valuable asset and a worthwhile way of working, rather than just a tool to be deployed as part of the service creation process. This is the key shift that moves co-production from an ‘exercise’ to a standard way of doing things.
At the heart of this shift is acting on the input you have received from participants – too many co-production exercises don’t do much with the information they get, sadly. This is not to say that you have to implement every piece of information that comes your way; organisational requirements and funding needs will also necessarily influence decisions. It’s about involving people in a meaningful way that actively considers their input and includes their subjective experiences. You should be honest with participants about the fact that their input will be given proper and thoughtful consideration, but may not all lead directly to change; this transparency can help in addressing the power imbalance between participants and researchers, which can often be a stumbling block to equal collaboration.
As long as you give this information as much weight as other factors, it becomes a fruitful and rewarding process.
The uses of co-production
It would of course be useful if we could point to a single, tried-and-tested blueprint model for all co-production projects. But the nature of the methodology – and its brilliance – is that it is unique to each use case. When assessing the range of literature on defining co-production, NHS England says “there is no single, universal model of co‑production and the way co‑production is done varies in each situation depending on the task, context and the people involved.”
It’s a practice you can use in many areas, from research and product development to creating university induction days for neurodivergent students and interactive educational experiences. On the subject of research, co-producing independent research is vital in making decisions on how to apply co-production principles and the information it yields: rather than just saying we think we know that our services work, research provides the evidence to say that you know it does.
Why it is the way forward for services
Co-production doesn’t just give neurodivergent people a voice to be heard, but the power to help shape the services, products, and experiences they will use and be affected by. Trying to create a service without consulting the people using it is like designing a car without ever having been on a road before. You’re never going to fully understand what is required for the best experience. Sometimes we can make really quick improvements – like adding more frequent intervals to our booking system, for example – and sometimes the benefits take longer to see. But it’s worth it, because it’s the only way we can build something that gives our users what they really want and need.
Moreover, once you have the process and resources in place the first time, it makes it far easier and quicker to do again, and again, until it’s a regular part of your working practices. Word spreads about participation and therefore each project can increase uptake, help all parties involved learn from the experience, and provide better results.
The human side: making people feel valued
I’ve talked mostly about how co-production benefits an organisation or service here, but I want to take a moment to mention how much it can make someone feel valued just to be a part of an exercise like this.
My colleague Connor Ward, who’s our co-production lead, told me:
“Co-production is really the only way to know you’re making something that meets people’s needs and works how they need it to. Not only that, but it can be incredibly validating for people to feel involved in developing things that will help them and others. People tell me that having the chance to get involved makes them feel like someone’s listening and really willing to try, which counts for a lot. And when they actually see us putting things in place that they’ve talked about, it feels like they’ve made a real difference. Whether we get it exactly right every time or not, people love that we’re making the effort to learn from them and do better.”
So not only does co-production help you develop systems, products, and services that genuinely meet the needs of the people you’re there to help, but giving people the chance to make their voices heard can be incredibly valuable in itself. It builds confidence that you’re doing your best, and it brings people together in an effort to make things as good as they can be.
It’s the way forward, and it’s worth the effort.
We need to be more ambitious in driving change and making co-production a standard way of doing things. It’s a win-win process that delivers benefits for both the providers and the end users, helping you create services and products that genuinely improve the lives of the people who need them. It’s why co-production is the way forward not just for services, but as best practice for everyone.
By Mat Taylor, Commercial Director, Brain in Hand