Is co-production the key to a more equal and equitable society?

OK – so, some background first:
Its increasingly argued (and accepted) that the root cause of the causes of most of the ills in our society are due to inequality (http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/).

Separate to this is the increasing interest in the delivery of public services through what’s called ‘co-production’ – the concept that as the recipient of services, it’s better to do ‘with us’ than ‘to us’; after all, surely as a patient we know best what treatments or care packages we’ll be more likely to engage with? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coproduction_of_public_services_by_service_users_and_communities


Last week I participated in one of the co-production road shows that Nesta are running (http://www.nesta.org.uk/events/previous_events). As well as being a nice opportunity to reflect on some of the work and thinking I’ve been doing around this over the last year or so, it was also a nice opportunity to catch up with someone I’d not seen for 7 years since moving away from Cambridge! http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-church/13/497/8

Anyways – in one of the sessions the idea was floated that coproduction = equality. After mulling this over for a bit, I think I agree. For Coproduction to truly work, all parties involved need to be able to respect each others’ experience and knowledge as being equally valid to their own, and also positively reciprocate to manifest that respect and build the trust that’s needed in such a relationship/dialogue.

I then started to think that the coproduction arrangement would also be more equitable in that it has to ensure fair and appropriate access for everyone to be able to engage with it, depending on their circumstances – after all, in a society as diverse as ours, one size won’t fit all, so it’s only just that people be treated equitably according to their need.

So – on the face of it, coproduction isn’t just about creating a 'revolution' in public service delivery and better empowering us, the recipient of public services, it’s also directly contributing to tacking the inequalities that affect us through starting to shift our collective mindsets through our starting to view those around us being as equally important to us in determining what the best courses of action should be.

Sounds great so far, but wait… most public services are increasingly sub-contracted to private companies to deliver – and they’re likely to be very resistant to the idea of coproduction as a delivery model owing to the costs to them that it will involve. But surely with commissioning moving more to an outcomes based model, coproduction can only be a good thing for them as pilot studies show that coproduction generates better outcomes? (and if they need further convincing, apparently Nesta are already working on the business case for it as well…)


So – coproduction: not just a better way to deliver public services, but a model that contributes to our becoming a more equal and equitable society!


Of course, the co-operative movement has been using this approach already for a few centuries; maybe I’ll write a companion piece to this on that angle next...


(and special acknowledgement in this blog to http://twitter.com/RuthRosselson for encouraging me to write this up)