What's the relationship between co-production and community engagement?
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 3rd July 2024.
That's one of the questions explored at the latest Scottish Co-production Network Ideas Clinic, which brought SCN members together to explore their experiences, talk about new ideas, and get peer support to handle tricky problems.
Discussion began with the idea that if community engagement starts with 'what do you think of our ideas?' then co-production might begin with 'where do we want to go?'. That’s a big question, and participants reflected on the importance of setting expectations and parameters so everyone understands what’s in scope and what's not.
Co-production certainly has the power to be transformative, but participants also recognised the value in using community engagement to understand priorities and improve outcomes. Does everything need to be co-produced? Perhaps we're better to think about a ‘spectrum of participation’, as well as rungs on the ladder?
Network members also recognised the challenges of taking co-productive approaches are significant, especially as time and budgets become more scarce. While certainly more intensive than engagement, co-production can help by facilitating open and honest conversations about potentially difficult decisions, preventing a tendency to 'hunker down'.
A key aspect of both co-production and community engagement was the importance of allowing time to build trust, foster relationships and ensure a shared understanding of the language and process – one of the many important messages the SCN team will be taking into Co-production Week Scotland later in the year.
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