Understanding the impact of co-production
Co-production is a key practice in social care, offering opportunities for the sector to work in partnership with people with lived experience to shape practices and services.
At the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) we talk to people drawing on services, sector leaders, social care workers, providers, and government bodies, and it is clear that co-production plays an important role in making sure policy and services are personalised and truly meet individuals’ and communities’ needs.
In 2023 we surveyed 837 participants including people who work in adult social care and people who draw on adult social care services to understand their experiences of co-production. The results highlighted that there are many good examples of good practice, and respondents felt that co-production can make a great difference in social care, helping to shape policy and service delivery.
However, the survey also highlighted that there is a lack of consistent evidence in relation to the impact of co-production. How could people know a service was better when having co-produced it than if they had not? How could they make a powerful case for resources to undertake co-production?
How can we measure impact?
There are many definitions of impact and the ways of measuring it will vary according to the definition. Measuring impact in co-production is not an easy task, but with the help of specific tools and accessible approaches, we can learn and develop a good understanding of how to report on impact in a systematic way.
If we want to convince funders, governments, and strategic partners to invest more resources and make co-production consistent across the sector, demonstrating longer-term impact and the benefit of such investment is key to driving changes at a strategic level.
Pathway to impact
When thinking about long-term impact, a key part of the process is breaking it down and identifying how the smaller parts of the process will connect one to another to generate impact in the long term. These start with activities which include everything we do in co-production, including workshops, meetings, developing materials and more. These activities will lead to outcomes, the smaller steps that form a pathway through which, by achieving each outcome, we will make our way towards long-term impact.
Assessing outcomes
A key part of the process is assessing outcomes to understand what has been achieved so far in the journey towards impact. There are a variety of types of outcomes, and it is important to consider how you can measure them to understand if they have been achieved, and how. For example, if an outcome is to increase staff members’ knowledge on a certain subject, we will need to ask people how they rate their knowledge before and after learning sessions. Identifying the type of information you need and creating a plan for gathering and processing such information is a key part of the process.
Find out more about co-production impact
Understanding the logic of how outcomes will lead to a long-term impact and measuring the achievement of outcomes are a good start to better understanding the process and developing your own impact assessment framework.
SCIE has worked with people with experience in co-production and people with lived experience to develop a resource that helps organisations demonstrate, based on evidence, the impact that co-production is achieving.
The guidance provides further details on the above steps where you can also find links to key resources and an easy-read summary to help include people with lived experience in the process. These are available on the SCIE website.
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Image depicts, Daniel Jupp Kina, Research Analyst, Social Care Institute for Excellence