South Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) has made a commitment to using co-production to support and develop healthcare services in the South Nottinghamshire area. Their plans have been backed by Nottinghamshire County Council.
Maria Ballantyne, Group Manager – Living Well South team, Nottinghamshire County Council, said: “Co-production is about us working together to shape and improve health and social care services by involving the people and their carers who need and use them. In practice, it means that we want to work with people who use the service so they can tell us about what works well, what doesn’t and, how can we make sure that we are all talking about it to make positive changes.”
Maria also explained: “It enables the people who have ‘lived experience’ of receiving them to participate in the planning and decision making about their local health and social care service offer.”
The co-production commitment is based on four key principles and will aim to improve diversity and equality in the region.
- Equality: Everyone’s views and experience are valued, and all the people involved are equals- whether they are health and social care professionals, people or carers with lived experience.
- Diversity: Health and social care services should make sure that the group of people involved reflects the diversity of the local population.
- Access: Co-production meetings and discussions must be accessible for all to take part. There shouldn’t be anything that makes it difficult for any group of people to take part in co-production.
- Reciprocity: The people involved in co-production should get something for taking part, for example this could be support for someone with care and support needs so to enable their carer to take part, or the chance to meet new people and feel part of a co-production community.
For more information on co-production click here.