There's a tidy little cluster of examples of neighbourhood-based co-production just posted (anonymously, why?) on the NANM blog, claiming that people do just ‘get it’. So is the idea coming of age?
Co-production or co-delivery of public services and benefit gets a mention in most of my presentations and I agree, most people do get it. Most of us don't expect our medics to produce our health for us, we don't expect teachers to have sole responsibility for educating our children, and the police are not the only people who produce safety on our streets.
A lot of this thinking goes back to the late 1980s or early 90s, raising questions about how long it takes for the penny to drop in the official-bureaucratic mentality. I'm reminded of a meeting with a county police authority a couple of years ago, in which I made the above points and found myself faced with blank incomprehension, suggesting that few of them had reflected on the social context of their own practice.
Co-production needs to be seen as a form of collective behaviour and its ultimate expression is sustainable lifestyles. We can see people's responses to the pressures of climate change ('we must do our bit') as the unlikely source of a post-Thatcherite resurgence in credibility for collective approaches. A little encouragement from our most influential media wouldn't go amiss.
Another angle on this is the 'crowding-out' effect, the view that in the second half of the last century the welfare state overwhelmed citizens' readiness to help themselves or one another - hence the line that co-production is 'the biggest revolution in the shape of public services since Beveridge' (NESTA press release on their recent report).
There's a strong (but I believe unproven) argument to suggest that in some areas of social support, and with some demographics, accusations of crowding-out may be valid. Which leaves us with the forces of economic recession, reducing expectations and the necessity of localism. It's sometimes tough growing up.
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