Posted on: 30 August 2024
New Citizen Project has been working with five health and care teams across West Yorkshire, in partnership with the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership, NHS Leadership Academy North East and Yorkshire and NHS England. This collaboration has explored what it takes for an integrated care board (ICB) and the wider integrated care system (ICS) to support and enable greater use of co-production approaches.
Through a series of workshops, and individual and peer coaching, teams were equipped with a range of tools and methodologies, enabling them to apply participatory approaches to five projects across West Yorkshire which were:
- Centre for Positive Ageing: Age UK Wakefield District
- Reducing Antimicrobial Resistance: West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership
- Improving Paediatric Audiology: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
- Life After Stroke: West Yorkshire and Harrogate Integrated Stroke Delivery Network
- Building Global Partnerships: West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership
The resulting report, Putting Participation into Action, is now available at: www.
The report shares more about the projects and the collective learnings on what people working across health and care need in order to adopt more participatory approaches.
Paul Gavin, Joint Deputy Director, Equalities and Involvement, People and Communities, NHS England said,
“This report gives a blueprint for others who are at the start of their [co-production] journey. I commend this report and see it as essential reading for systems looking to shift their own paradigms and use every asset they have to deliver equitable, improved outcomes for its people and communities.”
Building on existing guidance, Putting Participation into Action explores barriers and provides practical recommendations for how different organisations in the system, and their leaders, can further support colleagues to work in partnership with people and communities, by developing:
- Understanding: of what co-production is (and isn’t), and its value.
- Confidence: in what it looks like and the tools and practices that can support it.
- Capacity: having the necessary time, resources, skills and mindsets.
- Commitment: feeling encouraged, supported and accountable to do it.
The opportunity of co-design and co-production is to flip the perspective of health and care solely as a service to be delivered to people - with providers holding all the answers - into a shared challenge where people and communities can bring ideas and be part of solutions; increasing resource and capacity and ultimately, driving better outcomes.
Ian Holmes, Director for Strategy and Partnerships and Deputy Chief Executive, NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board said,
“As our work with New Citizen Project shows, co-production is not easy, and the key is people. Building on our West Yorkshire co-production principles, we will explore the practical steps outlined in this report so our people, staff and volunteers can feel empowered to take a step further on their journey of co-production.”
Find out more
If you’re interested in finding out how you can put the learnings from this programme into practice, or if you’re a leader in the health and care system interested in joining a future programme, get in touch with the New Citizen Project team at hello
How to get involved if you work in health and care
There will be an online learning session with New Citizen Project on Tuesday 10 September 2024 (10am to 12pm). This session is open to anyone nationally working in the health and care system. To join the session, please email wyicb.