What is co-production?

Co-production has many definitions but generally speaking, it is a values driven approach that promotes organisations to work in equal partnership with service users to design and develop services. It recognises service users as experts with lived experience that have the knowledge to ensure that services are successful and fit for purpose. Although getting feedback from service users is a useful tool, co-production goes a step further in that it is rooted in the principle of equal power sharing where decisions are made collaboratively by organisations and experts by experience.

 

What is Migrant Help doing?

As part of our strategic aims, Migrant Help is committed to become an organisation that is truly led by our service users. We view our service users are experts on their own situation as they have lived experience of the asylum and immigration systems and the challenges this comes with on a day to day basis. We think experts by experience are best placed to evaluate our services so we can understand our impact, and work with us to design new ones to bridge gaps.

To achieve co-production in a meaningful way, we are shifting our culture and creating space across the organisation for our service users to have an equal say on what our services and wider organisational activities should look like. This ensures that our services are more accessible, sustainable and responsive to people’s expressed needs.

We are kickstarting our co-production journey by piloting a Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP) within our Vulnerable Persons Resettlement (VPRS) Scheme service. This will consist of a group of VPRS service users that will help develop the service and review some of our policies and procedures. In the future, we hope to roll the LEAPs out to our asylum and modern-day slavery support services too.

We are excited to see where this journey takes us, so please check back here for updates on how we are doing.

 

Where can I go for co-production guidance?

We are in the process of co-producing our own guidance with experts by experience and other charities, but there is a wealth of excellent online resources too. Here are some links that we have found useful:

Refugee Action’s Experts by Experience Guidance – tips on creating lived experience groups and diversifying trustee boards

Homeless Link Co-production Toolkit – to help services take steps towards introducing co-production

Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) Co-production resources – for health and social care professionals, frontline practitioners, people who use services, and carers

Rethink Mental Illness Co-production in Commissioning Guide – toolkit introducing co-production in commissioning, and a range of materials and ideas to develop co-productive ways of working

 

National Co-production Week

This year’s National Co-production Week is 05 – 09 July 2021, celebrating all things co-production. Our Involvement & Participation Manager has marked the occasion with a blog posted on the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) website. The blog explores how co-production can be used as a tool to promote anti-racism.

If you’d like to find out more about Migrant Help’s Co-production work or would like to share your thoughts and ideas please email [email protected]