All Blog Posts (378)

In-control have circulated details of the Inclusive Community Experience, to take place over 3 days on 29th, 30th and 31st January 2012 at Ribby Hall near Blackpool.

More information about the event is here, Inclusive Community Event 

If anyone would like to do a workshop to highlight their activity please contact…

Co-production describes a different way of working, where professionals and people who receive support work together, pooling their experience and resources in an equal and reciprocal way to get things done. There has been increasing interest and practical experimentation from a number of housing organisations into this approach. In times of increasingly tight budgets co-production can offer a way of generating better outcomes for residents whilst deploying staff in a more…

Do you see the opportunity of the older consumer market? Are you in the business of connecting people?

Apply for the Keeping Connected Business Challenge to win a share of £495,000 to develop your ideas!

The Technology Strategy Board and the Design Council are running a competition to develop innovative services that keep older adults better connected. 

Over the next six months we're looking to fund teams of businesses and designers to translate…

I recently attended an event at which someone from a public sector organisation was talking about some future developments. In the course of this talk, she kept referring to local residents as 'customers' , and talking about 'customer service'. It occurred to me that, if we are to make progress with co-production, we need to move beyond this 'customer' mentality, this perception of local residents as 'customers' of services provided by public sector agencies, and we need to move instead to…

We are currently recruiting for a new London Time Credits Team, a commitment to Co-production is an essential requirement of all Spice posts.

Spice supports organisations and public services to develop time credit systems for their organisations and local communities. We are currently developing a number of new projects in England. We are looking for:

- a team co-ordinator who will support three locality workers and develop a project…

The meeting will allow you to:

• learn about the best practice case study of Time 2 Trade Sandwell Timebank, and how the public health authorities and citizens are able…

Dear all,

As an amendment to the post below, the date and time of the next Birmingham coproduction event has changed!

So the Birmingham event will now take place on the 12^th of October, 2011 between 09.30-12.30. The venue is the Bridging The Gap, The Gap Centre, Hargate Lane, West Bromwich, B71 1PH (look out for old white Baptist Church). As before, contact Frankie (…

Dear all,

I hope you're well. Although we have had the last national network event, there are a number of regional network events coming up, of which there are details below. If you're interested in attending one of these, please contact the individuals listed:

• London event: October 6th from 10am - noon at Mushkil Aasaan, 220 Upper Tooting Road, London, SW17 7EW, hosted by the Wandsworth Community Empowerment Network. Contact Nadeen (nadeene@wcen.org.uk)…

Merron Simpson has authored a viewpoint paper on 'co-production, personalisation and housing: improving outcomes for individuals and communities' for the Housing Local Improvement Network.

It contains a useful summary of relevant policy doc's for housing providers, some practical co-production examples and then makes practical suggestions on how to embed 'transformative co-production' within housing association activity.

The full paper can be downloaded here,…

NESTA and the Innovation Unit are supporting the design and delivery of 'innovative solutions for people that are living with long term health conditions' in six areas. In order to support the sites they are commissioning specialist support on;

- co-production

- commissioning

- new technologies

- leadership and change management

- service design and public participation

- economics/ business modelling

- impact measurement

- workforce…

NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is seeking to recruit a Learning Lead to work across practical programmes to ensure they generate insights and evidence that are of use to public and social innovation practitioners and other external stakeholders.

The outline is here................. 

NESTA’s practical programmes represent a growing bank of knowledge about the methods and approaches that support…

If you working in adult social services and facing cuts you may want to consider multiplying your resources by getting your service users to provide services for each other. The charity Mosaic Clubhouse in the London Borough of Lambeth co-produces everything it does with its members, although all of them have experienced mental health problems. It uses a unique approach to develop a strong community among people who had never previously met each other - indeed, when you visit the …

''Living networks of conversation lie at the heart of our capacity as a human community to create the futures we want rather than being forced to live with the futures we get'' - Juanita Brown

Julia Slay has encouraged me to load here a small booklet I have just produced with my North America colleague, John O'Brien. We have been conducting Conversations about building sustainable and inclusive communities and seeking to document local examples of adaptive responses…

Almost all the practitioners I speak to about co-production have a clear idea of the practical tools and support they would like to help them further their work, and in influencing others about the value of co-production. Although these are many and varied, some of the most common ones include;

• An evidence review of the impact co-production has on people's outcomes, and the costs/value of public services
• Commissioning guidance and new commissioning ideas which…

Does anyone know any social workers who want to experiment with co-production?

SCIE and partners are inviting proposals for Social Work Practice Pioneer Projects (SWPPPs).The SCIE website says, 'We are seeking proposals for projects that can demonstrate they have the potential to realise benefits for people using services. We are particularly interested in proposals that are pioneering and which focus on social work practice with adults. We want to see social work and…

Colleagues at nef are involved in this project as part of their advisory group, so in this capacity I am circulating this to see if anyone would like to become involved. It would be great to see some co-production examples in this project and perhaps have the opportunity to explore if working co-productively makes communities more resilient to threats from climate change. Apologies for the use of 'vulnerable' in the project - the influencing work continues.....

Vulnerable…

Hi all,

We've had some interesting conversations with the Department of Health recently and there is the potential to influence change with respect to regulation.

What are the regulatory / red tape barriers that you face every day?

Do these get in the way of co-producing with people?

What would you do if you could change these policies and processes?

Hopefully we can get a good view of what change is needed, and use this to…