How to co-produce learning and development with people who draw on care and support

Two training organisations told us how they work with people who draw on care and support to co-produce learning and development for care workers.

Hasca Ltd

contributed by Lynda Tarpey, CEO, Hasca Ltd with thanks to Rachel Mason and Clenton Farquharson MBE

Hasca Ltd is a Skills for Care endorsed training provider and a Centre of Excellence. We’re a small specialist organisation mainly providing programmes for leaders, managers, and commissioners.

For me learning and development is about empowering learners through skills and knowledge development to change and improve the experience of those needing care or support. In writing this article Clenton Farquharson MBE reminded me of the basic rule ‘if you don't have a seat at the table, you are probably on the menu.’

In all levels of social care training, people needing access to care and support are always on the menu but rarely have a seat at the table. By continuing to deliver learning and development about people without them we’re setting learner’s expectations that it’s acceptable to behave in this way thus contributing to the continuing disempowerment of those receiving care and support.

As former Director of Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) a national organisation bringing professionals and end users together to share experiences and knowledge to co-produce solutions to barriers in the sector, I know that co-production is a powerful and underused tool to achieve change. It was therefore a no-brainer to embed this approach into our learning and development offers with profound results.

Our journey into co-produced and co-trained programmes began about 10 years ago when someone with a learning disability told me she wanted to train others to be able to co-produce and co-train as she did. We developed and co-trained that offer which was a challenging and inspiring experience. My learning from that was the importance of trust and mutual respect, being clear what each person needs and contributing and taking the time to plan properly.

At Hasca Ltd, in 2017 we developed the first national programme delivering the then new Level 5 Commissioning Qualification which includes learning outcomes about partnerships and co-production. I felt it would send entirely the wrong message to talk about co-production without experts by experience co-producing the learning materials and co-delivering in the room (virtual or otherwise).

To achieve this, I approached members of the National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG) and asked if anyone would be interested in working with us on the programme. Three members of that group have become valued members of our team here at Hasca Ltd. These people have extensive experience working alongside professionals in health and social care, and strategic, operational, and frontline delivery of special educational needs (SEN).

Their personal and working knowledge of these areas ensure they have the right skills and confidence to co-deliver the programme to a high standard, but also brings that exclusive unique 'lived experience' perspective which professional trainers may not have.

Now we have learned how to work co-productively in a way which works for the company and those experts by experience, we also work with local expert by experience groups in some areas of the country to bring in a more local voice of lived experience.

My advice to any other organisation starting down this route would be to seek out people who are already skilled at talking about their experience. Recognise that you need to learn from them how to make it work in your organisation. Then you can start co-producing or co-training with more vulnerable people or those new to the idea of co-production as they'll need you to be confident to help them develop their input. Local Authorities, Healthwatch, or local voluntary groups may be able to put you in touch with people who would be interested in exploring working with you.

You need to be clear from the outset what you're asking of people, what support you're going to give them e.g. training, briefings, pay, transport and personal assistant costs, and why they should bother i.e. your vision about what this will achieve.

To be an expert by experience means that person has a whole heap of challenges in their life over and above the average. If they are, for example, a carer of a young person with profound and multiple disabilities or they or their life partner has dementia they will want to be confident that getting involved with your organisation is going to benefit them not just add more hassle. That means having a conversation and co-producing what that relationship is going to involve.

How it works in practice is that we now have a small group of people with a range of experience who we call on to co-produce and co-train with us. So, for example when asked to do this article I asked our colleague experts by experience what they thought should be said and to give me any points for inclusion and I shared it back with them for comment before sending it to Skills for Care. You can't co-produce if you have a last minute culture because it takes time.

As a principle we pay people in line with other trainers but we discuss remuneration with each person or organisation e.g. voluntary or self advocacy group and work out what will be the best arrangement for them.

Co-producers and co-trainers need support and explanation of what is expected of them just as any very new trainer does. Whoever will be their co-trainer needs to be involved in that preparation to build relationships and confidence then feedback after the sessions.

For our learners, they fed back that the voice of lived experience in the sessions has changed their thinking. That they will be:

• seeking to co-produce the work they do and decisions they make
• looking to build more constructive relationships with those receiving care and support
• recognising the expertise of those living out the consequences of their practice is as valid as their own.

For us as an organisation working with people with such passion and experience brings the learning to life, is sometimes challenging but always energising and inspiring.

A final thought. If I or a family member ever needs care or support I would want to have a say in every decision made from how the budget is spent to how the care worker gets me out of bed. If you feel the same let’s use the power of learning and development to make that a reality by showing learners the value of listening to lived experience.

Speakup

Speakup people work on co-production daily.

It’s very important to make sure that everyone is included; it helps for better understanding and better decision making.

When good co-production happens, people or groups can really make a difference to the way services are designed, supported, delivered and commissioned.

In the past, there’s been a lot of control from service providers; this meant doing things to people without involving them or asking for their views. Other things that can happen include tokenism; this means asking people for their opinions, but not taking them into account when delivering services.

Good co-production means true inclusion and equality ; it means that people who use services and their carers control decision making and make sure that we make services better, by sharing decisions and responsibilities.

Skills for Care and other learning disability organisations, such as Speakup, Learning Disability England and People First groups (to name a few) are now using co-production all the time. This means that people are involved in decision making from the start.

Find out more in about co-production in this video by SpeakUp.

Find more information and support for staff learning and development with our #KeepLearning spotlight.

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