1. What enables and what hinders collaboration and coproduction
What enables and what hinders collaboration and coproduction between social workers and service users in practice?
Dr Ruth Allen
CEO BASW

2. The ‘Social Work for Better Mental Health’ initiative in England
An initiative to explore the strategic and practice potential of social work in mental health
Aims to explore the conditions for building professional and practice social work leadership
A quality assurance (QA) and improvement tool
An invitation to increase use of direct feedback from service users and carers
DH backed but independently developed and implemented

3. Setting an ambition for Social work
Human rights focus
Co-production and recovery
Social approaches and interventions
Recognising, preventing and addressing trauma
Evidence-led practice
Addressing social determinants

4. Social Work for Better Mental Health (2016) - 3 Resources
A strategic statement on the role of social workers in mental health services – Social Work for Better Mental Health
‘How are we doing?’ – An organisational self assessment for MHSW
‘Making the difference together’ – co-production of professional practice
20 different local authorities and some NHS Trusts

5. "Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and their neighbours" (New Economics Foundation)
More than collaboration and involvement but overlaps

6. A naïve question!
Collaboration and co-production in mental health routine practice – why is it important?

7. What enables and hinders service user involvement and coproduction?
Practitioner factors
Service user factors
Service factors
Other factors

8. Making collaboration and involvement meaningful
Principles – shared values and principles?
Purpose - reason for involvement?
Presence - who should be involved?
Process – what planning is needed?
Impact – what difference will it make?
4PI – National Involvement Standards NSUN 2015

9. Making the difference together
Integrating service user and carer evaluative feedback into routine practice and strategic planning:
Questionnaires
Collaborative conversations
Co-producing professionalism and practice:
openness and responsiveness
Continuous learning
Recognising our own experiences and lived expertise – ‘internal co-production’ as part of reflective practice and development of resilience

11. Creative conversations
Find the right setting – most workplaces are not conducive to good conversations
Create shared space – this could include ways to work together and clarify thinking, such as visual images or common themes
Slow down to speed up – taking time to listen as well as speak
Honour unique contributions – explore how each person can contribute to the other’s learning
See reflection as action – to enable new meanings to be recognised and shared and to allow ‘questions that matter’ to surface.
(adapted from Brown & Isaacs, 1997 p5)

12. Setting the conditions for direct feedback and co-productive dialogue
All parts of the system need to be engaged and prepared
Co-produce the whole process
Ensure it is part of learning not blaming culture
Make it relevant and safe for people using services and for staff
Carefully set the conditions that enables all parties to feel appropriate levels of control: ‘controlled learning encounters’
Ensure clarity for all about how feedback or dialogue will be used
For staff, integrate into reflective supervision and development plans

13. Co-production at the organisational and system level
Scaling up from practice
Design and strategy
Co-creation of culture
Designing the future

14. More information Swforbettermentalhealth@gmail.com Dr Ruth Allen
Dr Karen Linde
Dr Sarah Carr