Embedding co-production into commissioning

East Midlands Strategic Health Authority

• Successfully embedded co-production in the commissioning process
• Initiated 5 co-produced projects in Derby & Leicester
• Built the capacity for sustainable co-production

During 2007 and 2008 I led a 12 month project with Derby & Leicester City Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). Their ambition was to embed co-production in all of their service development work, to go beyond stakeholder engagement and try to create more equal relationships in the delivery of healthcare.

We did this by training a small group of front-line workers in the techniques of experience based design and co-production, to provide them with practical means to empower all stakeholders.

The team included organisational development experts who complemented the development of these skills by creating the right organisational environment for these ideas. We also collaborated with the New Economics Foundation to help managers, in very practical ways, understand how co-production could be commissioned.

One of the most significant episodes for me was when a GP talked with some ladies from Leicester and together they decided to co-produce better talking therapies. The previously reluctant GP was converted by hearing firsthand their needs and by understanding their absolute belief that the therapies worked and that these ladies really wanted, and had the capacity, to help provide them.

The project was independently evaluated and judged successful, there was... "recognition and acknowledgement by the PCT top management that the Community Dialogue Project approach is a valued and an effective approach which has an important role to play..."