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Co-Production and Solving Together
Blog by Mark Agathangelou, Solving Together Lived Experience Partner and Cristina Serrao, Lived Experience Ambassador
Mark:
As a lived experience partner (LEP) working with NHS England since 2020, I’ve had the opportunity to watch Solving Together develop, actually attending its launch in 2022 where I got the chance to have a breakout talk about elective care pathways with senior NHS professionals. And that’s been the hallmark of my quite considerable involvement with the project, work being conducted in a spirit of equality, openness and co-production.
Scrolling forward to 2023, Self-Referral to Community Health Services was another area of involvement for me, being asked to make a varied input to this as a LEP. As well as commenting extensively on the platform on various ideas, I was also asked to participate in a very intense tweet chat on the subject which generated a real buzz and lot of great ideas in addition to being a lot of fun.
Shortly after that I played a slightly different role with the data driven elective recovery event run by the team. I was requested to attend as an LEP in order to help in giving it greater balance and a patient-centred perspective. But I was also able to utilise my ‘network of networks’ to connect the team to a very impressive LEP who was able to contribute by presenting to the webinar, making a really powerful impact.
Overall, I feel a lot of satisfaction about my involvement with Solving Together. The ethos of the project is wholly aligned with what matters to me – generating improvements to health services by harvesting great ideas from anybody who wants to get involved based on strong co-production principles. And in my work with the team I have felt respected and valued and that I’ve made a real contribution.
Cristina:
Due to my involvement in the national Best MSK Health Collaborative programme I was invited to be a Solving Together champion for Elective Care. Lived experience partners have always enjoyed being a part of crowdsourcing. Solving Together is open and inclusive whilst sitting alongside clinical colleagues in equal partnership.
I have proudly presented with Solving Together with a lived experience partner at NHS Confed Expo 2022, and I co-presented at the IHI conference in Copenhagen in 2023 alongside Bev Matthews and Matthew Hill from The Health Foundation. At both events I expressed the importance of involving both lived and learnt experience to share ideas.
Lived experience partners have been involved with Solving Together by putting ideas onto the platform and being active members of tweet chats. The beauty of Solving Together is that everybody is equal and has an opportunity express ideas no matter who they are.
Coproduction resources
Co-production & Quality Improvement resources, including a guide, literature review, films & postcards, can be found here.
This post was edited on Jul 12, 2023 by Leigh Kendall
Comments (3)
I think the key to coproduction is thinking about how poeple who are less likely to speak up but might be more impacted by how services work can engage. The language we use, where and how we talk to people are so important. People with a learning disabilty experience signifiant health inequalities but are rarely part of the journey from the very beginning when thinking about systms and services, its even more important to think about intersectional issues to support poeple to coproduce
Hi Louisa. Thanks for commenting and I agree that it is important to include people who are under-represented. You might be interested to look at NHS England » Learning disability and autism: get involved It includes details of a learning disabilty and autism forum and an advisory group.
Thanks Mark and Cristina for sharing your experiences and thoughts. It's great to hear how people and communities are involved throughout the process.