A Tool to Aid Implementation of Co-production

There is no “one size fits all” approach to co-production. Local circumstances, history, culture, community cohesion and engagement, needs and professional capacity will all have an impact. Different localities will be seeking different outcomes: for some it’s ensuring strategic commissioning approaches deliver real value across the board, for others it might be a particular service that requires transformation at times of budget cuts.

At Kaizen we have developed a “Co-production Readiness Tool“ to help identify what support will be needed in moving towards the adoption of a co-production approach. This could be used in respect to individuals or groups and can operate as a guide to benchmark where things are at, where they will need to be for effective co-production and identify the areas that need improvement.

In order for effective co-production to occur, each and every party in the co-production needs to have a sufficient level of core capacity. We divide this capacity into 3 areas:

1. Knowledge – what does a person need to know, be aware of or understand.
2. Skills – what does a person need to be able to do. This can further be sub-divided into “hard skills” which are practical in nature (e.g. proficient in use of IT or in understanding financial statements) and “soft skills” which are interpersonal (e.g. able to resolve conflict, able to communicate effectively.)
3. Attitude – what attitudes does a person need to have. Underlying attitudes can be beliefs about self, others or the world – which can be positive or negative.

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The Co-production Readiness Tool, can be used in a number of ways:

• In the planning stages of a project to assess the current situation in order to identify possible barriers to a successful co-production implementation
• In a “live” situation (such as a training workshop or facilitated meeting) as a self assessment tool for each group
• For assessing the training needs of a group at any given stage in the process

We have used the examples of these four groups, but the same approach can obviously be used with any set of groups or individuals.