So lots of people are doing public engagement again, and some of those people are giving a shit about inclusive practice – better known as ‘engaging with hard to reach/seldom heard/vulnerable groups/service users’.
Co-production looks to be getting a bit more realistic too. Big issue with co-pro is that, when done properly, it asks people in positions of power to share/hand over their power to the people receiving the services they provide. Do with, not to etc. Lovely, but, they’ve got a statutory duty to make decisions and be held accountable for them. Without completely re-writing the law you just can’t share that weight, no matter how many times you sing ‘Imagine’. Note I have not given a position on whether we should re-write the law. I’d need to read it in full first and – it’s very long.
The field of co-production seems to have twigged that the best thing to do is co-produce (or co-create or co-design…) at specific points in a wider process that adheres to statutory regulation. Much less confusing than trying to share power all the way through.
Recently myself and a small team got a project off the ground engaging care experienced people. It’s one of the most exciting, most important, things I think I’ll ever do with my time in this body. Why? Because it doesn’t look like the projects I did when I was doing work on the basis of my care experience in my early 20s – and it doesn’t look that way because the people I’m leading this work on behalf of asked me what good looks like and listened. Then they let me crack on with it, offering support.
Instead of stuffy rooms in government or charity offices, it’s in nice open spaces (with bean bags, I bloody love bean bags). Instead of being paid an ‘incentive’ for showing up and trying to understand reams of policy and high level conversation whilst occasionally being asked “what do you think we should do?”, the young people involved are being paid to run a freelance project. Instead of having a pre-defined project, framed in uncomfortable language, which they have the task of weighing in on, they are given a budget and a goal. They run the show. Their show. We, I, have the privilege of ensuring they are well informed, trained, safe and supported to do so.
If research, specifically engagement with service user research, really wants to gain proper understanding – then it needs to hand over some power. The people commissioning still have to make the decision – fine – but the space for deliberation and recommendation forming should belong to the service user as much as it does the decision-maker if the conversation is to have any meaning and provide any truthful, useful answers.
In my ideal world, service users participating in engagement based research would own a space to connect with each other and form deliberated opinions outside of an overbearing deficit-based culture full of stupid words like ‘placement’, ‘personality disorder’, ‘former relevant child’ and ‘intentionally homeless’ (I will never get over ‘intentionally homeless’ – I mean ffs). I still need someone to explain how the symptoms of post traumatic stress are a disorder rather than a reasonable response.
Note that they may need permission and support to stop using those words and form their own language and narratives, depending on how much of this culture they’ve absorbed over the years. I had to train myself to stop calling myself a former relevant child. .. Always a former relevant. Never a child. 😉
They would be provided with real opportunities to up-skill and lead the research – and the researchers role would be to train, support, listen, adapt and then co-produce the events, analysis and reporting. The reports will be written and shared in a way that makes sense to more people and those who participated will have better lives because of the experience, not just because of the potential actions taken afterwards or having a satisfied client. Eventually, peer researchers will lead – and the quality of the findings will be more useful, meaningful, in-depth and authentic. Most importantly, the narratives will belong to the people they’re about.
I don’t want to just make things more accessible and invite a few more people. I want to create a culture of engagement that empowers, listens and learns. I want to hand over the power of finding better ways to deliver social care and mental health services to any of the people who receive these services that are game. My job is to enable this, not dump the power on them nor hold it over or away from them.
I don’t believe that good co-production is done by just bringing a mix of skills into the room; e.g. commissioners, researchers and people with lived experience – I believe real co-production is done by shifting those skills around, having people with lived experience become the researchers whilst the researchers and commissioners come to understand what the lived experience means. Hearts and minds.
A researcher (co-)creates, not extracts, wisdom.
