Future perspectives
Redefining co-creation
In common with many others concerned with co-creation, CoSIE took as a point of departure its much cited characterisation by Voorberg et al., (2015, p. 1335) as “active involvement of end-users in various stages of the production process”. This is a description rather than a definition and quite broad, so interpretations can vary in detail and emphasis. Implicit within it are new roles and responsibilities and, at least potentially, changes in the balance of control. As the pilots progressed, engaged with diverse stakeholders and began to share their learning, it became more prominent and explicit within CoSIE that co-creation attempts to reposition people who are usually the targets of services (i.e. have services done to them) as asset holders with legitimate knowledge that has value for shaping service innovations.
Co-creation in the context of public services refers to citizens’ participation and repositioning as legitimate asset holders in the shaping and production of the services that affect them and granting them active role in co-producing service value.
Asset-based approaches: rethinking risks
Public services often struggle to develop meaningful relationships with people because they are constrained by rigid thinking about individuals in targeted groups as those with ‘risks’ who are in lack of abilities and resources rather than potential contributors to addressing their own needs. Additionally, public sector needs and logic may take over the service and targeted group needs. Policy makers and professionals become prone to ‘safeguard’ their and organisational interest and avoid addressing some “risks” as they think in terms of ‘resource scarcity’ and the need for extra ‘resource allocation’. Asset-based, co-created services implies re-thinking risk – how it’s assessed, the language used to describe it, and the ways we respond to it.
Characteristic to co-creation is asset-based approaches that focus upon people’s strengths rather than what is wrong with them. This runs counter to much deeply ingrained thinking in public services on managing needs and fixing problems (Wilson et al, 2017; Cottam, 2018). Put more formally, it means that co-created public services are premised on people exercising agency to define their goals in order to meet needs they themselves judge to be important. This suggests choice, but co-creation is not synonymous with consumer models and notions of service recipients as ‘customers’. As enacted in CoSIE, co-creation is informed by versions of ‘deep personalisation’ inspired by social activism and advocacy, initially mainly by people with disabilities seeking support for independent living. Rationales for the individual CoSIE pilots overwhelmingly emphasised issues of social justice for people who are marginalised and lack power.
All the CoSIE pilots took the ‘asset-based’ perspective to heart. They demonstrate that it is possible to legitimate the knowledge of people who receive public services, and nurture their participation in service innovation and decision-making. This has proved to be so even in contexts that look highly unpromising, for example with services people are compelled to receive (work activation, criminal justice) and in places where there are longstanding traditions of patriarchal attitudes and top-down provision (Hungary, Poland).
Co-creation implies thus a different approach to agency both for service users and professionals, such as:
- No to ignoring ‘risk’
- No to only looking at presenting risk
- Yes to addressing people’s underlying needs
- Yes to drawing on people’s wider assets (positive relationships, communities, etc.)
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