As part of ‘Co-production Week Scotland’ we were invited by The ALLIANCE to attend a Self-management and Co-production event at the Serenity Cafe in Edinburgh as representatives of the Moray Wellbeing Hub.
To read a full report and see all the slides from the day, the ALLIANCE has produced a report on their website (click here to visit their website).
The theme of coproduction week 2017 is ‘Power’ and so we were asked to consider the following questions:
- What are the shared aspects of learning across self-management and coproduction
- What can we learn about ways to address power imbalance from the work taking place across the self-management and co-production networks?
- How can we best share our knowledge of co-production across our networks and beyond?
Following introductions, we had two presentations from different people and a showing of an animation from NHS Health Scotland and the Glasgow Centre for Population Health. This was a very good introduction to the discussions that were to follow, setting the scene by focusing on where power lies between people and organisations.
You can access this excellent video here on the NHS Health Scotland site or Glasgow Centre for Population Health (7min 30sec but we understand there is is a place you can just watch sections of it and will update when we find it).
The first project we heard from was ‘You Care Eye Care’ a pioneering project supporting Black Africans with visual impairment in Glasgow hosted by RNIB Scotland. They spoke about lots of the issues that we have faced in growing the Moray Wellbeing Hub. A good tip from them was to keep the description of what they were going to do as loose as possible to ensure the project could grow organically. They also spoke about coproduction being very time consuming, moving slower than expected and the issues of key volunteers moving on – great for them but a loss to the project.
Heidi gave an excellent presentation on the work of the Moray Wellbeing Hub which focused on how we are shifting the power balance to include everyone in local decision making that can really affect how lives are lived.
There was a break for lunch with excellent food supplied by the Serenity Cafe, a social enterprise (like us!) with a focus on recovery who we visited recently.
The afternoon sessions turned to the discussion around the questions on power and co-production and I was struck that much of the change in focus on power in Scotland (from Government to the people) is coming directly from the Scottish Government and that we should all embrace this change. It may be that the shift in power to the people is not yet fully appreciated by everyone – we need to do more to promote this way of thinking!
Another theme that came up a few times was the term ‘nurturing’ which again chimed for us at the hub as we look into mentoring/buddying toward community empowerment for local people.
Ewan
