Co-creation is a key instrument for social services leaders to make their services more effective at improving people’s life outcomes. By co-creating support programmes, public authorities in collaboration with service providers and people using services, can make social services more person-centred, thereby ensuring they effectively respond to people’s real needs.
At the 32nd European Social Services Conference (ESSC) hosted by the European Social Network (ESN) social services leaders shared their experience of how to apply co-creation successfully at the local level. The conference highlighted some key lessons learned.
Co-create to empower people
Cormac Russel, Founding Director of Nurture Development, a consultancy for local community development in Ireland explained “Actually, neighborhood belonging, social connectedness, and community control are key determinants of people’s health and wellbeing”. In this endeavour, Mr. Russel emphasised the need for local social services leaders to reach out to people using services when developing social care and support services, as involving people is the first step towards ensuring effective solutions.
Kenny Jansson from Age Friendly Upsala in Sweden illustrated the effectiveness of co-creation based on his local experience during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mr Jansson told the conference: “Citizens should be involved in developing solutions. By actively reaching out and involving people with foreign origins, we managed to make Upsala the region with the highest Covid-19 vaccination rate amongst people with a migrant background in Sweden.”
Co-creation can only happen if people using services are seen as equal partners. Julian Jennings, from the National Experts Citizens Group (NECG) in England, a consultative body that co-creates programmes and policies that directly affect people experiencing multiple disadvantages with government and statutory agencies, told delegates: “Co-creation needs relationship building from equal to equal with decision-makers otherwise it will not work.”
People as agents for change
Angela Blanchard, Expert Practitioner in Community Development and Long-term Resettlement, USA highlighted the central role of asset-based working when co-creating with people using services: “Positive change starts with a first question: What are your strengths, skills and aspirations?”
Adding to this, Christian Bason, Founder of the Transition Collective, a company specialised in human-centred service design and societal innovation, underlined that as social services leaders “We need to build capacities beyond training professionals meaning that we should empower people to be resources for each other in everyday life.”
What that means in practice was illustrated by Genio, an organisation that has developed several peer support initiatives in Ireland. “Lived experience has a service improvement and therapeutic benefit to services and for those who use services, but peer workers need clear roles and proper training aligned with their capacity to be fully effective” explained Genio’s Michale Ryan, and continued: “Furthermore, we should build long-term career development perspectives for experts by experience, allowing them to evolve professionally”.
Key lessons for co-creation in the community
For social services leaders, co-creation should become a key method of organising care and support in an effective and person-oriented manner. The advantages range from better buy-in from people needing support, to improved wellbeing and personal outcomes. Becoming an equal part of social services planning, provision and evaluation, can be a first step towards increased self-efficacy for persons in situations of social exclusion but it can also help social services to become better at supporting them.
In order for authentic social inclusion to become a reality, social services leaders and professionals at different levels should be ready to share decision making power with the people and communities using their services. Organising this transition of power at services planning, provision and improvement, may need investment in time and resources at the start, but it will pay back in better outcomes for those who need support and those who will co-provide it.
