Co-production in children’s social care
In children’s social care we're proud to champion co-production through our work with individual families, at a service, or operational level and strategically to ensure that we incorporate and respond to the needs and voices of parent carers and children and young people in our work.
Co-production is about developing equal partnerships between the people who use services and those who run them. This mean’s working with people; not doing things for them.
By engaging closely with parent carers of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) from the beginning, on a basis of mutual respect, co-production can be used to overcome barriers, manage expectations and solve complex problems. When services and communities design support together, it leads to better, more sustainable outcomes for both families and the services they access.
In Shropshire we use the 'Bench' model of co-production:
Individual co-production
In children’s social care we co-produce children and young people’s assessments and plans. This means that we work closely with them and their parent carers from the start of the assessment process to make sure their own lived experience is reflected, and that their needs are included with actions that will support them to reach their best outcomes and live a fulfilling life which prepares them for adulthood and independence. This uses a person-centred approach and recognises people’s strengths and values. Children and young people and their parent carers are included in the review of plans to ensure they have a shared ownership.
Service level (operational) co-production
This is where a service or team work with those who use their services. We use feedback from individuals and their families about the services they use to help shape what we offer. Parent carers, children, and young people tell us about things that work well for them, things that need to be improved, and gaps in services that need to be addressed. This means that when we redesign services, we have a better idea of what we need to look at to improve our offer in children's social care. We then also work with representatives from the Shropshire Parent Carers Forum PACC, the Shropshire SEND Information Advice and Support Service (SENDIASS), parent engagement groups, and children and young people experiencing care to co-design the services we offer, the processes we follow, and the policies in place to govern our work.
An example of this in children’s social care is the co-production of information available on the SEND Local Offer, including this page. We have worked with parent carers to respond to their information needs. This has been both in respect of enquiries being received from individual parent carers and through working with PACC.
Strategic co-production
This is about the system working with the SEND community to increase the positive impact of its collective work in a specific area. It helps us to work with a variety of partners and makes sure that the community voice influences and informs system wide planning and priorities. In Shropshire, PACC provide representation to the SEND Partnership on behalf of the parent carer community and champion the needs of families with SEND from across Shropshire at a strategic level.
In children’s social care an example of strategic co-production has been the conception, development and implementation of a social care questionnaire which is completed to support a child or young person’s application for an Education Health and Care Needs Assessment (EHCNA) and at the point of their Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP) Annual Review. This work was agreed after discussions with SENDIASS and PACC who raised concerns that social care needs were not being effectively captured in the EHCP process, and this was impacting on transition and preparation for adulthood outcomes. The document was co-produced and enables children and young people’s care needs to be acknowledged and included in their EHCP even when they don’t have a social work practitioner providing support to them. This has helped to improve the overall quality of EHCP’s being issued in Shropshire as they are more holistic in observing a child or young person, with all their needs included.
Find out more about co-production: