Helen shares her experience of co-production working inside social care, what a difference co-production can make in the lives of people that need care and support.

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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