What Our Clients Say About Us

For the past four years, we have worked closely in partnership with Governance International to deliver our Leadership Development Programme for Councillors in Northern Ireland. This programme, which is annually updated, has inspired each cohort of councillors to widen their visions, raise their ambitions and skill themselves up to play leading roles in their communities and their councils. The modules are challenging, highly informative and fun – and the programme is helping to make local government in Northern Ireland more effective.

Fiona Douglas - Regional Development Manager, Northern Ireland Local Government Association

The Governance International Co-Production Star Training Programme has equipped me and my colleagues with valuable co-production skills. The Co-Production Labs, which were a key part of the training programme, even resulted in two new co-production initiatives – falls prevention and wellbeing with people living with diabetes. The Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership is now building on this training in transforming its commissioning practices.

Anne McKenzie - Lead Commissioner, Aberdeen City Health and Social Care Partnership

The learning and development on strategic commissioning and co-production which Tony Bovaird provided to East Riding of Yorkshire Council over several years has been highly effective in giving key staff in the authority the skills and vision to make commissioning more effective. What has been equally valuable is that the tailored support has helped colleagues to build bridges across departments and services and to identify new opportunities for building collaborations with our local partners and forging closer links with our communities.

Paul Bellotti - Director of Communities and Environment, East Riding of Yorkshire Council

The Co-Production Star Training was very forward thinking and productive - I certainly got a lot from it. From my own experience of being on training in the past, I usually feel it has tended to be more about receiving information, with a minimal focus on using what is learned, whereas your approach enables us all to try, test and reflect the learning in the ‘real world’.

Ian Duncan - Former Development Worker at CFINE, now Operational Service Development Officer, Grampian Housing Association

Delivered by Governance International, we used the Co-production Lab in the programme to develop ‘Wigtownshire Women and Cancer’ (WWAC) as an innovative co-production initiative. This quickly took off as a valuable way of empowering women affected by cancer to support others based on their values of compassion, respect, dignity and love.  WWAC is based in a remote rural area of Scotland and has already improved the quality of life of over 200 women who are now part of this social movement.

Penny Halliday - Vice Chair Integration Joint Board, Dumfries and Galloway Council

The co-production project PRESENT has helped East Dunbartonshire Council and its partners to make substantial progress on their dementia journey. Governance International provided highly valuable guidance through its Co-Production Star toolkit and its large set of inspiring international case studies. This joint work has delivered social innovations locally and provided initial evidence of improved wellbeing of people living with dementia. We will now build on these achievements to roll-out co-production in other areas of our work in social care and health.

Andy Martin - Head of Adult & Primary Care Services, East Dunbartonshire Health & Social Care Partnership

I greatly benefitted from the Governance International study visit to Mannheim and Freiburg on German approaches to co-production. In particular, it provided me with some stimulating new ideas and templates for co-designing people-powered places in Scotland - and the learning from examples we visited will strongly inform my future work at Architecture and Design Scotland. After this very productive trip, I look forward to future co-operation with Governance International.

Diarmaid Lawler - Director of Place, Architecture and Design, Scotland

I cannot overstate the impact the Governance International study trip to Mannheim and Freiburg has had on me.  Not simply in stimulating ideas, but in giving me ways to make those ideas concrete. In a very full 2.5 days we were able to see the real difference a co-production approach can have on people’s lives. I don’t think I could have learned this from conferences, books, or any way other than by meeting the people you identified and seeing the work in action. The work Elke Loeffler put into organising this trip and her commitment were faultless and I look forward to working again with Elke and her team in the future.

Julie Smith - Community Development Worker, Community Action North, Edinburgh