Putting Participation into Action
Over the past year, five health and care teams across West Yorkshire have been working with New Citizen Project, in partnership with the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, NHS Leadership Academy North East & Yorkshire and NHS England, exploring what it takes for an Integrated Care Board and the wider Integrated Care System to support and enable greater use of co-production approaches. Through a series of workshops, individual and peer coaching, teams were equipped with a range of tools and methodologies, enabling them to apply participatory approaches to a range of projects – from service redesign, to capital investments, to reducing health inequities – pooling learning and supporting each other along the way.
The resulting report, Putting Participation into Action, is now available at: www.newcitizenproject.com/participation-into-action
It shares more about the projects that teams undertook and their collective learnings on what people working across health and care need in order to adopt more participatory approaches. Building on existing guidance, it explores barriers and provides practical recommendations for how different organisations in the system, and their leaders, can further support colleagues to work in partnership with people and communities, by developing:
- Understanding: of what co-production is (and isn’t), and its value.
- Confidence: in what it looks like and the tools and practices that can support it.
- Capacity: having the necessary time, resources, skills and mindsets.
- Commitment: feeling encouraged, supported and accountable to do it.
The opportunity of co-design and co-production is to flip the perspective of health and care solely as a service to be delivered to people – with providers holding all the answers – into a shared challenge where people and communities can bring ideas and be part of solutions; increasing resource and capacity and ultimately, driving better outcomes.
“As our work with New Citizen Project shows, co-production is not easy, and the key is people. Building on our West Yorkshire Co-Production Principles, we will explore the practical steps outlined in this report so our people, staff and volunteers can feel empowered to take a step further on their journey of co-production.” – Ian Holmes, Director for Strategy & Partnerships / Deputy Chief Executive, NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board
“This report gives a blueprint for others who are at the start of their [co-production] journey. I commend this report and see it as essential reading for systems looking to shift their own paradigms and use every asset they have to deliver equitable, improved outcomes for its people and communities.” – Paul Gavin, Joint Deputy Director, Equalities & Involvement, People & Communities, NHS England