Lambeth is set to host the next London Co-production Practitioners Forum on the 19th June, 10am-12.30pm at the town hall (see booking details by clicking here).
The practitioners forum is run by the New Economics Foundation and brings together a range of individuals with expertise in doing genuine co-production to share knowledge and expertise. I attended the previous event hosted at Praxis in Bethnal Green, a great organisation doing some really valuable work with migrants and refugees in the area. At the event we also heard about the fantastic way that Look Ahead are mainstreaming co-production in their organisation. It was really interesting to hear (from a service user) about the way service users are really involved in the operations and decision making process at Look Ahead. This ranged from interviewing new employees and designing job advertisements to training staff members and developing pathways for service users to work in full time positions at the organisation.
We are really excited about hosting the next practitioners forum, the agenda is open for delegates to add items and we’ve added a couple about how Lambeth is embedding co-production across the organisation:
- Helen Sharp commissioning manger for young peoples services will be talking about work that she is doing with nef on embedding coproduction throughout youth services using the Outcomes Based Commissioning framework
- An interactive action-learning session on ‘The Challenges of Coproduction in the Public Sector’ . There will be facilitated discussion of interesting new coproduced projects and how they can be taken further.
It will be great to chat about the things we are up to with experts in co-production, there are plenty of organisations in Lambeth already doing co-production and we also hope to see lots of these local examples there too.
Here’s that registration link again, you can also talk to Sarah Lyall about the network via her email sarah.lyall@neweconomics.org
Cooperative toolkit 
What are co-production practitioners, please?
Hi Paul, co-production practitioners are individuals who are doing co-production or have experience in using methods of co-production in their day to day work. By co-production I mean when professionals listen, design and deliver services with service users and citizens, rather than to them.
The new economics foundation practitioners forum (is described as) “for frontline practitioners to discuss their work, the approach they take, and the challenges they face. It is a chance to see how co-production transcends service divides, to learn from the tools and models other practitioners work with, and to contribute to the knowledge and discussions of the network.”
I hope this helps?