Coprodnet and Governance International co-hosted a co-production workshop during the Policy@MBS week at the University of Manchester, on the 30th October 2012.

The workshop showcased three inspiring case studies of involving users and communities in public services from the North-West. These examples showed why co-production of health and wellbeing is a powerful approach for better outcomes or improved efficiency of public services. The workshop also explored the ten most common barriers to scaling up co-production in public services and gathered smart ideas from participants on how to overcome these barriers. These co-produced results will be made available soon!

Co-Production in economic development, social services and health:

• Dave Carter (Manchester Digital Development Agency) - Smart Cities, Smarter Citizens
• Helen Allen (Community Catalysts) with service users Peter and Becky from DanceSyndrome - Co-producing micro-service. Click here to watch a video of Helen describing the work of Community Catalysts. 
• Nick Dixon (Stockport MBC) - NESTA-funded People Powered Health project

Overcoming the barriers to co-production:

Elke Loeffler (Governance International) discussed with the group what they see as the the top ten barriers for scaling up co-production in public services.

Scaling it up – Smart ideas for making co-production work in public services:

James Duggan (Coprodnet) facilitated the discussion on how to overcome barriers of co-production and gathered smart ideas for a co-produced pamphlet resulting from the workshop. 

Click here to read a report that summarises the learning points from the event.

Elke Loeffler and Frankie Hine-Hughes, Governance International, participated at the Communities Can 2012 Conference that took place in North Wales in May 2012. The conference explored the capacity for co-production and coaching to empower communities and create wellbeing. Edgar Cahn, father of timebanking, and Chris Gray, CEO of Timebanks USA were guest speakers at the event and discussed the ability for public service co-production to help communities tackle the problems they face. Click here to read the interview Governance International did with Edgar Cahn prior to this conference. 

Elke Loeffler, Governance International and Tony Bovaird, Birmingham University, were invited to give a public lecture to more than 40 Scottish government officials about the series of Governance International Co-Production Roadshow Events which took place all across Scotland in mid-January and mid-April. While the two-day and one-day events surfaced a lot of exciting co-production initiatives, they also showed that co-production was still patchy. Some initiatives such as Food Train and the Family Nurse Partnership have successfully been scaled up over wider areas – but most initiatives have remained small scale and local, even when they appear to have wider applicability.

In order to widen and deepen co-production, Elke and Tony suggested some specific policies that should be implemented in Scotland:

• Co-production should feature more strongly in performance management and competency frameworks.
• Co-production champions in Scotland should support each other to learn from each other’s strengths and weaknesses through facilitated peer reviews, based on a clear benchmark of good co-production practice.  
• Needs assessment should become Needs and Capabilities Assessment (along the lines of the currently project being developed in Walsall MBC in England).

Sir Harry Burns, Chief Medical Officer of the Scottish Government, emphasized in the discussion that there is already sufficient anecdotal evidence to show that co-production works.

The 2011 German Public Management Conference focussed on e-government strategies to bring about public service transformation. Florian Birk, Director of Governance International, highlighted in his keynote speech the potential of public service co-production. As he stressed new technologies are an important driver in the changing relationship between citizens and government. The 400 participants were particularly intrigued by speed-watch schemes now operating widely in the UK. This new form of co-operation between volunteers and the police shows that even in 'sovereign' tasks of the state citizens have an important contribution to make to improve outcomes. More co-production practices can be found in Florian's presentation in "Konferenz 2011" at www.effizienter-staat.de