Today’s NHS and healthcare managers must tackle increasingly complex challenges with very limited resources. In order to create and implement the best solutions possible, they need to work effectively with each other, with their staff, with their patients and with their community. 20th Century consultation methods aren’t designed to work constructively with public concerns that appear with tremendous force overnight on social media. Co-production is touted as being a solution, but what does it mean in practice?Through her journey from hospital services campaigner to County Councillor sitting on Cumbria’s Health Scrutiny Committee, Rebecca Hanson has had a unique insight into the creation of healthcare co-production in West Cumbria. In this quick and easy read, she describes precisely how and why co-production is working to generate better decisions and improve stakeholder engagement. What are community co-production groups? How are they managed? What else is needed? How can situations where communities have lost confidence in their healthcare leaders be turned around? All these questions and more are addressed head on in this 60 minute read.Rebecca’s razor sharp ability to narrate what’s going on has been honed by her career working in the co-production of teacher training. She has also been a Digital Champion for the Royal Society of Arts, where she contributed her expertise on moderating discussion forums in ways that nurture expansive learning to the debate on 21st century enlightenment.
