Co-production Week 2025
How Good Practice Mentors have helped to create impact through co-production – Ageing Better and beyond!
The focus for this year’s co-production week is “innovation”, and how innovative ways of embedding a co-production approach creates impact, in terms of meaningful and sustainable change.
The Good Practice Mentor team work on a national level to address challenges faced by organisations striving to reach, connect and empower their communities.
GPM are focused on demonstrating the benefits of the “working with” approach, sharing the importance of engaging with diverse and seldom heard voices, and creating an environment that fosters collaborative working, and we wanted to take this opportunity to share some of the ways we have been supporting stakeholders to make impact, influence decisions and drive forward change.
Our learning and experience stems from Ageing Better, a 7-year national programme operating in 14 geographical areas across England, where co-production as a “test and learn” approach was at the core of all programme development, delivery and evaluation.
During Ageing Better, It was essential to encompass innovative ways of bringing older people together to work towards the common aim of reducing loneliness and isolation which involved, in a diverse range of urban, coastal and rural communities.
As part of our legacy we harnessed our learning, shared our stories and demonstrated the ways in which we impacted people, services and communities through the Stronger Together Toolkit a one stop co-production resource, which we have shared far and wide, and continue to do so to this day.
Beyond Ageing Better – supporting our stakeholder’s aims and aspirations
Over the last two years GPM have worked with over 962 stakeholders, through listening to the specific needs and challenges across public, voluntary, housing and health services.
These organisations have included a large adult social care commissioning team, operating across rural and coastal areas wanting to agree the ways of working within an existing co-production development group; a VCSE network looking to embed co-production within a county wide Integrated Care System; and a regional charity working to connect men at risk of loneliness and isolation. This is just a snapshot of who we have worked with so far, however many of the aims and aspirations are often similar.
Our stakeholders want to be able to increase awareness around the value of co-production, ensure that decision making is more aligned with a range of different involvement methods, develop creative and accessible ways of hearing the voice of lived experience, and finding ways of going out and meeting people where they are at.
Ensuring that everyone is on the same page through the use of inclusive and ‘jargon free’ language is also a common theme, as well as encouraging more integrated ways of bringing everyone whose business it is to measure impact and understand the ripples that are created through the “working with” approach, so that organisations can demonstrate meaningful and effective change now and in the future.
You can read some of our case studies to see how we have been working with different stakeholders and the difference it’s made, under the resource section of our webpage.
During co-production week we have run two interactive sessions – Sharing impact in your own work, to bring people and organisations together to share how co-production has created impactful and meaningful change at both a grassroots and strategic level, including the difference it’s made to the people involved.
As part of these sessions, we spotlighted the following considerations when demonstrating and evidencing impact, as highlighted by SCIE, who believe that innovation through co-production “is essential and not optional due to the pressures our societies face”.
The essential areas of impact to consider include:
- Innovations in commissioning
- The role and value of lived experience
- The need for more diverse voices
- Tools to help evidence the impact of co-production
- The difference it makes at a grassroots level
- Long term change to wider systems.
And we also asked participants to reflect on the following prompts:
- What does innovation in co-production mean to you?
- In which areas have you made impact through co-production?
- What creative or innovative methods have you used?
- Where do you want, (or what do you need) to drive further change?
We would love to hear from you to find out how you are making a difference through innovative methods that harness ‘a working with’ approach or explore how we can support you to make further impact and sustainable change.
Contact Bluebell at gpm@syha.co.uk to arrange a chat and exchange information, your aims and aspirations.
