We went into developing the Big Plan by thinking about the principles of co-production/working together. We were clear from the start that we would all develop our Big Plan together. After all, co-production is working in partnership with people who draw on support, carers, families, staff and everyone involved.
We looked at the work other organisations had done in this area and the key features and characteristics they described. Among them were the Think Local Act Personal co-production advisors, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and the New Economics Foundation.
Our Co-Pro Group
We developed our own Co-Production group, the Co-Pros. Some of our work is supported by Learning Disability England.
We are committed to ensure that anything we work on together is of a high standard and is truly co-produced.
How to measure what we do?
There’s a well-known statement by businessman H James Harrington:
If you can’t measure something, you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.
We decided to develop our own set of seven co-production standards. We use these standards to evaluate and measure the work that we do.
What are our co-production standards?
You can find about them in the video below, with how we go about each one. They are:
- Think about what people are good at (we are all seriously awesome!)
- Help people to use things they are good at and support them to get better at them.
- Doing things with people where we both help and listen to each other.
- Help people have groups around them that can support them.
- People who get support help staff to be better staff, and everyone is equal.
- Everyone has something to give, and no-one is more important than anyone else.
- There shouldn’t be anything difficult to take part.
We know that it will be a long journey to put the Big Plan into practice completely, but we’ve made a good start.
