Coproduction & Timebanking Thanks to the New Economics Foundation, Timebanking Wales and Queens University Belfast this slide examines the policy imperative and best practice in developing and implementing coproduction. This document is dedicated to statutory and voluntary organisations who wish to discover handson experiences, learn new tips and map next steps! From Belfast conference 19th June 2014 hosted by Volunteer Now Part of NI Conversation 14: Making Local Work, Development Trusts NI Authors: Lucie Stephens, New Economics Foundation ; Jenny O'Hara ; Professor John Barry, Queens University.

1. Welcome to
Talking, Learning, Sharing
Time for Change?
Tweet: #makinglocalwork

2. Wendy Osborne OBE
CEO Volunteer Now

3. Dave Wall
Department for Social Development
Director of Policy and Communications

4. Co-production: what it
is and why it matters
Lucie Stephens,
Head of Co-production

5. About NEF
• Independent ‘think and do’ tank
• Seeking sustainable social justice: the
three economies
• Work alongside practitioners to promote
innovative solutions
• Developed a range of practical tools and
publications including well-being, SROI
and timebanking

6. What is co-production?
Co-production is a relationship where
professionals and citizens share power to
plan and deliver support together,
recognising that both partners have vital
contributions to make in order to improve
quality of life for people and communities.
Co-production Critical Friends Group, 2012

7. What is co-production?
The ‘jargon buster’ version
When you as an individual are involved as
an equal partner is designing the support
and services you receive. Co-production
recognises that people who use social care
services (and their families) have knowledge
and experience that can be used to help make
services better, not only for themselves but for
other people who need social care.
Think Local Act Personal

8. Why co-production matters
The core economy =
countless under-valued
and priceless human and
social assets that make it
possible for society to
flourish.
Co-production enables
public service agencies to
value and grow the core
economy.

9. Co-production in real life
• http://www.hcct.org.uk/
• http://www.camdenshares.org.uk/#

10. Recognising co-production
• Seeing people as assets: working with
people’s expertise by experience
• Building on our capabilities: supporting
people to put their skills to use
• Developing two way relationships: mutual
responsibilities and expectations
• Growing peer support: supporting networks
• Blurring distinctions: reconfiguring how
services are designed and delivered
• Facilitating not delivering: enabling people
to achieve their own personal goals

11. How is it different?
Doing With: Outcomes cannot be
done to or for people, they are
achieved with people, through equal
and reciprocal relationships. People’s
voices are heard, valued, debated
and then – most importantly – acted
upon.
Doing For: Participation invites
people to be heard but they are not
given the power to make sure that
their ideas or opinions shape decision
making.
Doing To: People are expected to
agree that the service will do them
good and let it ‘happen to them’.

12. What is co-production?
Who designs?
Professionals
design services
People &
professionals
together
People design
services
Whodelivers?
Professionals
deliver services
Traditional service
model
Co-designed
services
Professionals &
people together
Co-delivered
services Co-produced
services
People deliver
services
People trained to
deliver services
Self-organised
community provision

13. Levels of co-production
• Basic: acknowledges people’s action is intrinsic to the
outcome.
• Intermediate: recognises that people’s lived
experience can improve services.
• Transformative: involves citizens in designing,
commissioning and delivering services. Transforms
power and control.
• Transformation scenario: Additive co-production
where public sector resources are combined with
individual and community resources.
• Cuts scenario: Substitutive co-production with public
sector inputs replaced by citizens or communities.

14. What is well-being?

15. 5 ways to well-being
• Connect: invest in relationships
• Be active: get out and about
• Take notice: be in the moment
• Keep learning: do new things
• Give: do things for others

16. Well-being and co-production
Competence
Autonomy
Relatedness
Recognising people as assets
Building on capabilities
Blurring distinctions
Facilitating not delivering
Mutuality and reciprocity
Peer support networks
Self-determination theory Key features of co-production

17. Why co-production matters
Focussing on co-production leads to
• Increased participation and engagement in
ways that are meaningful for citizens and
service users
• Genuine empowerment and ownership
• More relevant and effective services
• Improved wellbeing, greater solidarity
• Sustainability and value for money

18. Find out more
www.neweconomics.org
@NEF

19. Co-production, the ‘core
economy’ and community
planning: The Northern
Ireland Context
Professor John Barry
Queens University Belfast
j.barry@qub.ac.uk

20. Basic co-ordinating institutions of
human society
(Nation)-State – 300-400 years
Market – ‘truck and barter’ (c.12,000
years/settled agriculture), modern
industrial/capitalist economy (c.250
years)
Community – since we evolved as a
species of homo sapiens (c.50,000 years)

21. Co-production and the core
economy
 Distinguishing between ‘employment’ and
work/labour – not all socially necessary labour is
monetised i.e. is not formally paid employment
(public or private);
 The ‘hidden’ economy upon which the formal
(public and private sector) economy is based;
 Different terms – ‘core economy’, ‘convivial
economy’ ‘informal economy’, ‘social economy’ –
not all same but all gesture towards productive
labour/activity that is beyond the public/state and
private/market economy

22. The economy from a different
perspective

23. Co-production: what is it?
“Co-production means delivering public services in an
equal and reciprocal relationship between
professionals, people using services, their families
and their neighbours. Where activities are co-
produced in this way, both services and
neighbourhoods become far more effective agents
of change.”
new economics foundation
“The involvement of citizens in the delivery of public
services to achieve outcomes, which depend at
least partly on their own behaviour and the assets
and resources they bring”
(Boviard, 2012)

24. Asset backed community
development and empowerment
Every person and every community is of
value and has something to contribute.
The task for statutory agencies is to work
with people and communities to identify and
build on the assets they have, helping them
to set their goals and aspirations and
assisting them to achieve them.
Genuine partnership working

25. Assets=Resources=Strengths
 Financial – money, credit, savings;
 Buildings – schools, church halls, roads;
 Social – kith & kin, community, trust, networks of support;
 Tools/equipment, books. IT, etc.
 TIME!!
 Personal – health & well being, education, experience, skills,
motivation, self esteem;
 Natural – environment, energy, natural resources,
greenspaces;
 Political – influence, power, active citizenship;
Access is not equal, there are barriers beyond individual
control

26. Beyond orthodox economic
thinking
Because GDP measures only monetary transactions related to the
production of goods and services, it is based on an incomplete
picture the human economy.
The human economy is a sub-system of larger social networks and
ecosystem
A co-production perspective offer a more complete picture of how the
human economic system fits within the social and environmental
systems upon which it depends
By including the non-monetary social (and very often gendered)
context of core economic activity

27. The ‘Core Economy’ and Quality
of life
Beyond GDP and conventional
economic measurements
Measuring what matters
GDP/economic growth does
not distinguish between
positive and negative
economic activity (judged
in terms of human well-
being)
Core economy helps support
relationships and social
capital and in that process
helps better public
services

28. The Reform of Local Government
(RPA) in Northern Ireland
The reform process as the
refounding and not just
the administrative
reforming of local
government in Northern
Ireland
New contract /relationship
between citizen and local
government
“Without vision the people
perish”
 Key elements of
that refounding-
 General power of
competence for
local councils
 Community
planning

29. Community planning and the
core economy
 Community
planning:
Opportunity for
‘asset backed’
community
development
 Asset mapping –
what are the
capacities, skills,
etc. of the
community?
Co-production
‘Values the capacity, skills,
knowledge connections and
potential in a community…
sees citizens and
communities as co-
producers of health and
well being (and) instead
of doing things for
people shares power and
helps a community to do
things for itself’
(Improvement and
Development Agency, 2010)

30. Building on people’s existing capabilities: altering the delivery
model and mindset within public services from a ‘deficit’ approach
to one that provides opportunities to develop people’s capabilities
at an individual and community level;
People as ‘active citizens’: and neither passive consumers or
rate/tax payers and also co-production and community planning
as ways to repoliticise and democratise public services;
Valuing and promoting active citizenship (sometimes
oppositional) as a form of ‘caring/care labour’ for
democracy
Reciprocity, transparency and mutuality: offering people a range
of incentives to engage which enable reciprocal relationships with
professionals and with each other, where there are mutual
responsibilities, agreed expectations and greater degrees of
transparency and communication
Co-production and community planning

31. Co-production and community
planning
Partnership between statutory and non-statutory organisations:
relations of equality, respect and mutual learning and sharing.
Experts/professionals – ‘on tap not on top’: as facilitators of community
change not drivers of it
Importance of trust and partnership – not wasting people’s time and
energy, beyond passive consultation on service delivery towards genuine
and demonstrable participation and co-decision-making
Creating resilient and empowered communities
And achieve progress and delivery of improvement to the daily lives
of citizens at local level in ways the Executive and Stormont
Assembly cannot…
And potentially do so in ways that don’t necessarily require more
funding – change the decision-making dynamics – more
democratic power to citizens not necessarily more money?

32. Conclusion
Co-production and community
planning:
from ‘no taxation without
representation’ to
‘no taxation/public service
provision without participation’?

33. Some resources
Co-production practioners’ network:
www.coproductionnetwork.com
New economics foundation: http://www.neweconomics.org/

35. Jenny O’Hara

37. .
Humans need a social infrastructure as much as they
need roads, bridges and utility lines’
(Cahn, E (2004) 169).
Talking, Learning, Sharing – Time for Change?
Volunteer Now, Belfast
19th June 2014
From Concept to
Delivery
A story of about
co-producing social change from South Wales
& the ‘taking it to scale’ challenge!!

38. Content of Presentation
1. Context
2. Glyncoch’s Slow Start
3. Embracing Assets and Chaos
4. The underlying logos / method in the
madness
5. Social change
6. Taking co-production and time
banking to scale
3

39. Context…
• Glyncoch is in Rhondda
Cynon Taf
• South Wales Valley’s social
housing estate
• Economic decline since
closure of coal mines and
demise of manufacturing
• One of the most
disadvantaged communities
in Wales (WIMD; 2011)
• Focus of ‘Communities First’
Welsh Government Anti
Poverty Programme

40. Glyncoch’s slow start 
2005
Gloomy, bored,unproductive and deficit
focused multi sector, multi agency
partnership……
Underlying attitude…
‘This poor community needs to get
involved in constructive
partnership meetings, with
professionals that know what
they are doing, get educated,
health and most of all get into
work.’

41. Embracing Assets and Chaos
• Time Banking Wales helped
us audit volunteering hours.
In a community of less than
3000 people, over 32,000
hours of volunteering took
place (increasing to 37,000
hours with time banking)
• We did an asset map
• We came to see the
community as an eco-
system of seemingly random
but interconnected
activity…and full of amazing
people doing amazing
things!
Barton, Hugh and Grant, Marcus (2006)

42. Which do you prefer?
Which will have the strongest
outcome?
• Deficit = Intervention = Outcome
• Asset = Collaboration = Outcome

43. Quadruple Helix (John Duff (2006)
• Engage
• Plan
• Act
• Learn / reflect
Simultaneously!!

44. Method in Madness…
1. Community Supper AGM –
Community Groups and Members
present to each other and
appreciate each other!!
2. 3 themes chosen
3. 3 Co-design EVENTS (per year)….
4. Everyone does their bit…small
projects, big projects
5. Relationships and engagement
builds through reciprocal action
(time banking)
6. Report to each other the following
year…reflect..
7. Co-design and co-produce another
year of activity around theme…

45. Example:
Action to
Obliterate
Crime
y
PoPolice and
community safety–
Fun events and
open days
Grot spot 2 hot spot
Gateway
Sculpture
Multicultural
Awareness
Festival
Murals
Bio - diversity
Clean up
Recycling
Awareness

46. Always asking ourselves these
questions….
1. How do we recognise all people as assets?
2. Recognise the existing skills and attributes of
local people?
3. How do we promote mutuality and
reciprocity?
4. How do we enable peer support networks.
5. How do we break down barriers between
professionals and recipients?
6. How do we come together with a sense of our
direction…and work it out together?

47. The IMPACT…
• Truancy amongst some year groups has dropped by a third and is now on a par
with more affluent areas as is attainment at GCSE
• Over 100 adults per year are engaged in learning…learning feels as though it is
more of a cultural norm
• A by-product of all of this…we have the LOWEST crime rate in the Pontypridd
district
• Significant environmental improvements

48. Taking Co-pro to Scale
Next Challenge…
• Service Providers – signed
up to co-production!!
2. Action to support voices of
community members /
citizens?
- VOICE
- CITIZENS UK
- STREET AMABASSADORS
3. Asset Mapping
4. Bringing above together!!
6. County time bank design
5. Participatory Action
Research

49. Participatory Action Research…as an
ongoing approach
PLANNED PROCESS
• Train together as researchers
(ethnographic or appreciative–
inquiry)
• Undertake ‘listening campaign’
/ research and map current
work.
• Bring together stakeholders
• Co-design a programme –
perhaps based on what is
already in place – using learning
• Reflect and develop an
upwards cycle of improvement
that includes families
2 Participatory Action
Research Projects
1. Reducing isolation
2. Raising achievement in
Learning

50. Across Communities and Sectors…
-engaging
- planning
- action
- reflection / learning (Using Co-pro
framework)
…..SOCIAL CHANGE ON A
BIGGER SCALE!!

51. Discussion
Tweet: #makinglocalwork