Coproduction Week 2024 - Value of Coproduction

and the patients get to understand the perspectives of perspectives of the researchers and tho. Those two put together creates whatever comes out of the workshops or the the co production. Basically, and it's usually a very, very rich product because it's got input from all angles and especially when you have people from grassroots giving their opinions on topics that are being researched into or raised. Um, it it's it's really rich, especially if the participants are from diverse backgrounds

One person once asked me, um, what is diversity? And I said to them So I came up with this story, and now I use it quite regularly, and I'd like to tell you this story. So, uh so, um, I said the story about the potatoes. So this is diversity, and I said to her, So if you get a bag of potatoes, S, same potatoes and you call people from all different backgrounds, all different, um, races and you give each person a potato from the same sack and you say to them, Go home, cook whatever in your style with that potato and they go go home and they make that they make so some would make chips

Some would make mashed potatoes. Some would make uh, uh Bombay aloo And, you know, depending on their race and you tell them once you've done the cooking, don't eat it on your own. Bring it to the table

So when these people bring that potato same back a pack of potato. But when those different races bring that dish to the table, just look, just imagine how beautiful and delicious that table would look. And that's diversity

In this instance of co production, you could tell that the people who had brought us in, like was investing in it not so much, just with the resources, because they was investing with the resources they was paying us. But it wasn't just the fact that they was paying us for our time. It was that they was giving us a measure of responsibility and then backing us on our decisions

Do you know? So like, So even when right from the right from the offset they invited us into it. And we designed part of the tender that went out. Yeah, and then when the tenders come back, they give us, like 20% of it to mark ourselves, you know, as the co production panel

And then they like when? When they was employing staff, they had us sat there, you know, like taking part in the interviews, things like that. And then like when the staff was employed, we had a role in training them. Do you know what I mean? So So, like, they was actually giving us, like, a role

It wasn't something where they was just calling us in. And we were having, like, you know, some discussions and things like that. And they were just getting a little bit of, you know, consultation if you like

For us, there was actually, like they was invested like, um, trust to us. Do you know? Um, so, yeah, so, like, when I saw that and I actually saw that it, I believe it was being quite successful. It encouraged me a lot, and it helped me personally on a personal level because I was growing in confidence

I was growing in like, strength. I was I was growing in my kind of stamina to work again, and even in my motivation and my desire and my hunger and all that kind of stuff, um and it was helping me to believe that something could come. Do you know that? Like, actually, you know, at the end of this there might actually be a result for me, I might actually end up

You know, um, something might open up for me where, like, I could actually, like, you know, go into this kind of stuff full time. So, like, I had, like, I had hope being restored to me and stuff, which was something which I was lacking on. I suppose when I got out of prison, there's an old saying in the disability movement from, uh, from the eighties and nineties, nothing about us without us

And I think that is key to the whole positioning of the person who lived experience. Um, if we're not there and we're not contribute, not if we're not there, not just contributing. But if we're not there and driving the process and the whole thing is a bit of a shaft, Um, and I think in what we do within the Suffolk and Norfolk teaching partnership, we are very much seen as the as the key driver in that piece of work

For example, when the When the funding ends for the person who's driving it at the council, it's being set up that the project will continue and people like myself will be the people who will continue it. So you know, we're not just there for a short term involvement and then go off and get invited to do another project in a couple of years for a couple of weeks and then go up again. That's the difference between if you like cons, uh, weak consultation and genuine co production

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