Co-production: Walsingham Support

By Dominique Richards, Personalisation Officer at Walsingham Support @walsinghamuk

"Co-production isn’t new – it’s something that organisations, including ourselves, have been practising for a while."

Our Values

Putting people at the heart of everything we do was one of our founding principles. Ensuring the people we support have a voice and the opportunity to shape the support they receive has been central to our ethos from day one.

The Way Forwards

At its core, co-production recognises that everyone, regardless of ability, has unique skills, knowledge and experiences that when pooled together will deliver more effective outcomes.

Co-production doesn’t just benefit those who receive support, it benefits everyone involved.

The Real Difference

Co-production isn’t new – it’s something that organisations, including ourselves, have been practising for a while.

Our personalisation standards and personalisation audit were co-produced with people we support back in 2015 as well as our professional boundaries policy. The policy itself was conceived and led by people we support who consulted staff members and professionals as opposed to the other way around, unique in our sector.

The next step for the social care sector, collectively, is to ensure that co-production is integrated across all policies, practices and processes as standard.

Our Next Steps

To ensure that we continue to push our work around co-production and as part of our commitment to Social Care for Excellence’s Co-production Week (3^rd-7^th July), we are creating a brand-new co-production working group.

The group will consist of people we support, family members, staff members, professionals and independent advocates and will be officially launched at a one day co-production conference. Led by an independent facilitator, it will ensure each voice is heard and given equal waiting, with each attendee having a decisive role to play in the group.

This conference is just the start as we move away from ‘involvement’, where people we support are just consulted, and head towards a process where the people we support are fully intergrated from start to finish. 

We want a society where people with disabilities have full control over their lives, where their voices are not only listened to, but heard.

*If you would like any more information about co-production and what we are doing to embed it, please contact Dominique Richards, Personalisation Officer Dominique.richards@walsingham.com