Generating 'good enough' evidence for co-production

Co-production is not a new concept but it is one with renewed prominence and reach in contemporary policy discourse. It refers to joint working between people or groups who have traditionally been separated into categories of user and producer. The article focuses on the coproduction of public services, offering theory-based and knowledge-based routes to evidencing co-production. It cites a range of ‘good enough’ methodologies which community organisations and small-scale service providers experimenting with co-production can use to assess the potential contribution, including appreciative inquiry, peer-to-peer learning and data sharing. These approaches have the potential to foster innovation and scale-out experimentation

The effectiveness of paired study versus individual study in social studies

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Best of Both Worlds; Comment on "(Re) Making the Procrustean Bed?:Standardization and Customization as Competing Logics in Healthcare"

This article builds on Mannion and Exworthy’s account of the tensions between standardization and customization within health services to explore why these tensions exist. It highlights the limitations of explanations which root them in an expression of managerialism versus professionalism and suggests that each logic is embedded in a set of ontological, epistemological and moral commitments which are held in tension. At the front line of care delivery, people cannot resolve these tensions but must navigate and negotiate them. The legitimacy of a health system depends on its ability to deliver the ‘best of both worlds’ to citizens, offering the reassurance of sameness and the dignity of difference

Participatory research meets validated outcome measures:tensions in the co-production of social care evaluation

Funding for care service research is increasingly subject to the satisfaction of two requirements: public involvement; and adoption of validated outcome tools. This study identifies competing paradigms within these requirements and reveals significant challenges faced by researchers who seek to satisfy them. The focus here is on a study co-produced between academic researchers and people with experience of adult social care services. It examines to what extent research studies can conduct high quality public involvement and genuine co-production of knowledge, whilst attempting to produce quantifiable outcome scores. Findings add to debate around how to incorporate diverse perspectives in research which may draw on incommensurate accounts of validity and reliability. Findings also highlight constructive attempts by academic and co-researchers to make the combination of approaches work in the field. These small scale acts of researcher agency indicate some scope to combine the two approaches in future research studies. However conclusions foreground the importance of broader awareness of how tensions and power imbalances related to this combination of approaches play out in social policy research practice

Best of Both Worlds Comment on “(Re) Making the Procrustean Bed? Standardization and Customization as Competing Logics in Healthcare”

Abstract This article builds on Mannion and Exworthy’s account of the tensions between standardization and customization within health services to explore why these tensions exist. It highlights the limitations of explanations which root them in an expression of managerialism versus professionalism and suggests that each logic is embedded in a set of ontological, epistemological and moral commitments which are held in tension. At the front line of care delivery, people cannot resolve these tensions but must navigate and negotiate them. The legitimacy of a health system depends on its ability to deliver the ‘best of both worlds’ to citizens, offering the reassurance of sameness and the dignity of difference

The Twenty-First Century Councillor – Lessons from the Literature

The 21st Century Councillor research builds on the successful 21st Century Public Servant project (2013) and the University of Birmingham Policy Commission (2011) into the Future of Local Public Services. These projects saw a significant amount of interest from practitioners, identifying the need to pay attention to the changing roles undertaken by public servants, and the associated support and developmental requirements. During 2016 we have undertaken research into the 21st Century Councillor. North West Employers the Employers’ Organisation for the 41 local authorities in the North West of England) is supporting the work by facilitating access to elected councillors and organising regional events at hich findings will be shared. We are also undertaking fieldwork in other regions, and sharing the emerging findings with councillors in other regions, and with the LGA-SOLACE-PPMA 21st Century Public Servant steering group to ensure that the themes have resonance outside of particular regional contexts. This literature review is designed as a companion piece to the full project report in which we share analysis of the new empirical findings. Both documents are available from the project blog: http://21stcenturypublicservant.wordpress.com/

Inside co-production: ruling, resistance, and practice

It might be argued that a narrative of co-production has come to re-define contemporary social and public policy. Elinor Ostrom’s pioneering work on co-production, that started in the 1970s and was awards the Nobel prize for economics in 2009, offers a way to bridge the gap between the market and the state through involving citizens in the production of common goods (Ostrom et al. 1978; Ostrom 2015). This ‘disarmingly simple’ idea (Alford 2014) is now engrained within contemporary policy-making and public service delivery (Ansell and Gash 2008), symbolising a more humane and inclusive alternative to New Pubic Management (Newman 2005) and cornerstone to New Public Governance (Osborne et al. 2016)

Micro-enterprises: small enough to care?

This report presents findings of an evaluation of micro-enterprises in social care in England, which ran from 2013 to 2015. Organisations are here classed as micro if they employ five or fewer full-time equivalent staff. The aim of the project was to test the extent to which micro-enterprises deliver services that are personalised, valued, innovative and cost-effective, and how they compare with small, medium and large providers. Working in three parts of the country, researchers compared 27 organisations providing care and support, of which 17 were microenterprises, 2 were small, 4 were medium and 4 were large. The project team interviewed and surveyed 143 people (staff, older people, people with disabilities and carers) who received support from the 27 providers. The findings presented are relevant to people who use services and their families; social care commissioners; regulators and policy makers at a local and national level; people who provide care services; and social entrepreneurs who are considering setting up micro forms of support. The research was based at the University of Birmingham. It was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), as part of a project entitled Does Smaller mean Better? Evaluating Micro-enterprises in Adult Social Care (ESRC Standard Grant ES/ K002317/1)