Coproduction without experts: a study of people involved in community health and well-being service delivery

Abstract

Coproduction (equal professional-public involvement in service delivery) has been widely promoted as a means of revolutionising health and social care. Service providers/professionals are tasked with working more in partnership with service users/clients, recognising their experiences and knowledge as critical to the success of the interaction. Fundamental to the coproduction model is the notion that service providers and service users are separate groups, with different interests, identities, training and work protocols. This paper reports findings from a pilot research project which examined coproductive practices in two different health and social care organisations in the UK in 2012. In both settings we observed a range of initiatives in which most of the facilitators were people who had initially been service recipients, but become service deliverers in the spirit of coproduction. Analysis of fieldwork notes and interview transcripts indicated that though facilitators developed expertise, they were reluctant to call themselves ‘experts’ and their learning was rarely recognised by them as expertise. To progress coproduction practice and research, we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to the ways that knowledge, experience and expertise are distributed across organisations, as well as the significance of context in service change.