Co-Production – How it’s working for us!

National Co-Production Week is here (From 2nd to 6th July) and we thought we would share with you our experience of co-producing our newsletters.

Our “Working Together” newsletters are a co-production between Community Action Norfolk, Momentum, Voluntary Norfolk and you - our members and stakeholders.  The idea for the three infrastructure organisations to work collaboratively on the newsletters came directly from our collective members and stakeholders, who also guided the subjects of the newsletters too.  Majority of the local content comes from our members and stakeholders. The work of producing the newsletters is shared between Clare (on behalf of Community Action Norfolk) and Richard (on behalf of Momentum and Voluntary Norfolk).  Clare writes the content for the Sector and Funding Newsletters, whilst Richard writes the Jobs, Events and Volunteering, Training and Opportunities for Young People Newsletters.  Here is what they have to say about their experience:

Clare: “Working in partnership with Richard is great.  I feel like we are a team – there’s a big sense of solidarity and support.  It’s nice to be able to ask Richard for his take on something and feel either justified in the view I had or given a different take that helps clarify things a bit.  It is really good to know that we are working together and showing that the three organisations are working together to support the sector.”

Richard: “We started doing Working Together newsletters to improve the way we communicate with our member organisations but I can say that I benefited from it too. This is mainly because Clare is really great to work with. We both have to do other work while making sure that newsletters are ready get sent regularly, so it’s great to work with someone who goes through a similar experience and understands it. We’re here to support each other and it makes the experience much easier.”

The benefits of the “Working Together” newsletters is that our readers are no longer receiving newsletters from all three organisations with duplicate information.  By sharing the workload, it also means that each organisation is able to focus on providing quality content.

If you would like to know more about co-production you might find these articles interesting:

• https://www.scie.org.uk/publications/guides/guide51/what-is-coproduction/index.asp
• https://www.thinklocalactpersonal.org.uk/Browse/Co-production/?
• https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/co-production/
• https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/children-and-families/send-local-offer/about-the-local-offer/pledge-for-coproduction
• https://www.norfolk.gov.uk/business/supplying-norfolk-county-council/care-providers/market-shaping/coproduction/coproduction-in-the-care-market