If you’re wondering how to make massive savings on public spending without disastrous impacts on people’s lives, you need to think about co-production.  It is the route to making public services sustainable, according to Anna Coote launching a nef/NESTA report yesterday on ‘The Challenge of Co-Production’.

What was interesting about the event, though, was how realistic everyone was about the problems of mainstreaming co-production.  The presentations from people passionate about and committed to this agenda, left chair Patrick Butler admitting to feeling more pessimistic than before he started!  That realism is a welcome corrective to the frequent naive enthusiasm that greets ‘new fads’, but for those not yet committed, first a word to explain and promote the concept.

Co-production is essentially professionals and ‘customers’ designing and delivering services jointly.  Some argue that any service inevitably requires input from both.  However, differing definitions is one of the obstacles in moving the agenda forward, and needs a whole blog to itself.  Beyond that, it is helpful to see it in a wider context of areas with related underlying thinking such as community engagement, volunteering, self-help, behaviour change and mutual ownership (the ‘John Lewis’ model).

And why is this the answer to problems of public debt?  The New Economics Foundation (nef) identify three economies: the money economy (the work in public, private and non-profit sectors); the natural economy (planetary resources); and the ‘core economy’ (how people relate to each other in their daily lives in families and communities).  The core economy is generally unmeasured and therefore unseen but a huge resource – everything from housework to caring for children and vulnerable adults.  ‘Services’ like health, housing and social care actually take place predominantly in the core economy.  Which is why, if we going to successfully deal with public debt, the ageing population and even climate change, we need to involve people in their daily lives, and therefore use co—production.  Co-production can be (but is not necessarily) more effective as people know their own needs and circumstances best.  By giving people more control and often increasing their social contact it can also boost wellbeing which helps them and their health but also reduces costs of mental health and other services.

That’s the exciting, if slightly daunting bit.  So what were the problems?  Here are some:

  • It needs a change to our existing professionalised approach.  That could ‘just’ be a change off attitudes and removing rules and procedures which unwittingly prevent co-production.  But more could be needed: to unpick much of current apparatus and culture of professional service delivery.  However there is also a risk of going too far and throwing out all the benefits of the machinery of ‘mass produced welfare’.  This is also linked to government genuinely letting go.
  • Although it can be done, there are potential problems in mixing the real and core economy.  Mixing money and morality is like adding detergent to oil.  As David Halpern said at yesterday’s launch, if at the end of a dinner party you offered your host some money, it would rather dampen the atmosphere.
  • It suffers the same problems as other attempts to tackle long term outcomes, e.g. through LAAs and Total Place, that true long term social costs and benefits are not usually fully accounted for in public management, and accrue to different bodies.
  • Equality may suffer if some people are better at accommodating co-production than others.  Much time and effort may be required to help some of the most vulnerable people participate.
  • Political support is necessary but could kill it by rolling out a standardised model everywhere.  Co-production is a delicate flower which can’t be mass produced, but relies on values, people working things out for themselves and negotiating new relationships and balance of power.

So, co-production has much to offer but is not a panacea.  The good news is that there are lots of successful examples (many in the report, with figures to demonstrate their effectiveness) to learn from, and you can (perhaps have to?) start small so it needn’t mean risking extensive resources or reputation.

If you want to find out more or discuss this with others, we will be running a community of practice on co-production (on the IDeA community of practice platform – requires log-in) through January to bring together academics, think tanks and researchers – a co-production in fact!




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