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Report transcript in: Helen "what's your experience of co-production"
Please Report the Errrors?
Are you happy for me to record?
Cool. Do you want to introduce yourself?
Hi, I'm Helen.
Helen, could you tell me about your experiences of coproduction?
Um, so I've worked in social care and for quite a long time.
So my experience has really come from that sector
and really about
empowering people to kind of have their own voices and be involved in,
you know,
having choice and control and shaping their own care and support services.
And
again, as like you said,
I think sometimes it's this concept and idea that we sort of
pay lip service to and actually truly working together with people to
achieve things sometimes is quite difficult
and addressing some of the power imbalances. We've got kind of
services and service users for a better way.
I think it's it's hard, particularly working in the industry.
I think we have things that we have to do as professionals,
and sometimes you have to let those things go and really listen
to what people want and what's important to them,
and it might be something that wasn't even on your agenda.
But we need to make it and put it on your agenda. because that's what
people
need
that's really powerful and thank you for sharing.
So you talked about choice and control,
and how can co production help people with choice and control?
I think it's actually
giving people the opportunity to
say,
What are the things that maybe they don't have choice and control about and really,
actually look at?
What are the reasons for that and who who are the blockers and who can
enable that?
I think sometimes we sort of, you know,
there's a system and there's a path in a direction.
Everybody seems we have to go down.
Sometimes we haven't talked about what are the other options and what
what's really the risk of doing things differently and kind of co producing.
She talked about systems and services and working in social care.
Um,
does social care embrace co-production? Or is it,
um, I would say in small bit. Sometimes I think definitely
the intention. Is there
people who kind of really want to work in that way?
And but people are overworked. You know,
very little time and capacity sometimes, and you need to invest
in people and give people time and stuff.
And sometimes you know, because you're trying to get to an end goal.
You kind of miss out on that.
And actually, you need to make it an important part of your
can. Make sure you kind of figure out everything that you do. Really.
Thank you.
So if you had a magic wand and you could change social care and co-production,
what would that What would that look like?
Or, um,
that's a hard one. Um,
I think it would be,
um I'd want everybody to be open to sort of endless possibilities and options.
And social care should not be just about fixing people's problems and, you know,
throwing services and even money and resources at an issue.
Actually, you know, to work with people and with their their ideas,
their suggestions, their strengths and their
talents. And you can, you know, do things in a completely different way.
And we need to kind of stop being fixes, which is definitely hard for me to
say as
well.
So what would that feeling look like?
Sorry.
This question is hard to answer. I guess
it's not really down to me to determine what that feels and look like,
and it would be kind of, I guess,
different for every individual that we're looking to work with in support.
And it's got to be their version of having choice and
control over their support and what their lives look like.
And what you know, having a happy
life is very individual.
And would you have any examples where you've co produced? Well,
I tend to use one very basic example, Um,
when I worked with a family, um,
a single mom who had a
child with kind of very severe physical learning disabilities
and
and they were looking at what sort of support was going to be put in place for her.
So there was talk about, you know,
physios coming into the house and doing all this programme of
support and
work and exercise and
with
the son so
Mom could kind of get on and do all the things that
you need to do in your daily life running a house,
shopping, cleaning or things like that.
And when you actually spoke to the mom, she said,
I want to spend time with my son, and that's what I want to do
and can't you pay cleaner to come and clean my house.
And I can learn how to do these exercises with my son and support him.
I don't want that time away,
and everybody sort of looked around and went.
None of us had ever thought about that. Why can't we do that?
Um, and it did actually happen.
So that's kind of a small example,
but I think it was just It just flipped everything on its head.
A
really great example. Thank you.
Do you have any final thoughts around co production you wanted to share?
Probably not.
Um, I think it's just
I guess it's one of those concepts that I guess it's become a buzzword.
And actually, you know, just make sure you kind of understand it and don't kind of
use it unnecessarily, really? Actually get to grips with the messiness of it
and actually make sure that you do it properly and not just
thank you. I'm gonna stop the recording. There
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