The New Economics Foundation and Nesta published today their report on co-production, Public Services Inside Out.
It provides examples that represent a radical new approach to public services. They embody what has come to be known as ‘co-production’: public services that rest on an equal and reciprocal relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and neighbours. They exist today not as promises in pamphlets or manifestos, but as real services serving real people more cheaply and more effectively than traditional approaches. This is public services inside out – innovation that overturns the conventional passive relationship between the ‘users’ of services and those who serve them.
As we enter a period in which cuts and savings will be made from on high, the report agues that these examples point to the possibility of a different approach: better, cheaper services created from the ground up by those who know public services the best.
The report recognises User Voice’s unique approach in criminal justice: “Engaging peer and personal networks alongside professionals [is] the best way of transferring knowledge and supporting change.”
Download the report here.
