Co-production and engagement
In Adult Social Care we place adults and their carers at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to ensuring that people with care and support needs and their carers can be equal partners in planning and shaping future developments in Adult Social Care. But we know we’ve still got some way to go with this.
Behind the scenes we’ve been working hard to try and develop our own approach to co-production and ensuring that we are involving people in the development of services, something as simple as ensuring we get feedback along people’s journeys, to being part of recruitment decisions to helping shape and create new services. That is why we’ve developed the ‘Engagement, Involvement and Co-Production Our Approach’, a document which outlines our key commitments to making this happen. We want to ensure that the involvement of people with care and support needs and carers becomes standard practice.
We have also been looking at any barriers that might exist to involvement and have produced a policy for reimbursement of expenses and fees for participation.
We are looking at the different ways people can get involved such as recruitment. In last year’s report we talked about how our Promoting Independent Service (PILS) had been involving tenants in the recruitment of their own staff. Our Shared Lives scheme now has recruited two experts by experience, both individuals live in Shared Lives placements and now attend ‘Approval Panels’ for prospective Shared Lives Carers from across the West Midlands. They are both fully involved in the approval process and they bring a valued insight to the essential attributes a carer should have to support individuals.
We are also continuing to seek feedback from people accessing our support via our Experience Survey which also asks if people want to receive more information about Adult Social Care and ‘get involved’, growing the group of people we can engage with.
Looking forward and what's next?
In 2022/23 we started to hold open days, inviting people to come and hear more about Adult Social Care and get involved. In November we held our first event at the Central Methodist Hall. View photos of the event. Looking forward we envisage holding a number of such events each year in different locations and communities.
We want to continue to grow the number of people who want to be involved and hear their views. Where we have acted on feedback, will share this on our webpages using our ‘We asked, you said, we did’ page.
Adult Social Care Stakeholder Group
The work of Adult Social Care continues to be supported by our Stakeholder Group, who meet regularly to discuss any updates and influence the improvements of the service. The group is made up of Coventry residents who are experienced in how services work.
Joanna, one of the new members said ‘My mum and I have been caring for my dad since 2019 after a stroke had left him disabled. I found out about the Stakeholder Group through the Carers Trust last year and decided to get involved due to the problems we were having with home care agencies. At the time we felt isolated but since joining the group, I have found it easier to access information and better understand what Adult Social Care can provide and how it can help. I particularly like the opportunity to come together with professionals, service users and other carers to discuss issues such as upcoming developments. The bi-monthly group meetings provide an opportunity to contribute feedback, express opinions and make suggestions. The group is very friendly and the online platform makes it easier to participate due to my caring commitments. Furthermore, the opportunity to provide feedback through the Adult Social Care Experience Survey and a recent home support survey have enabled me to express my dad’s views and concerns.
The regular Coventry Carers’ Bulletins are also great for keeping up to date with the latest news and events. My lived experience has given me greater empathy and a way to relate to others in similar situations and I would like to use this experience to help shape the future of Adult Social Care through engagement and coproduction’.
Fnd out more about Getting involved in Adult Social Care.