September 12, 2022
The start of September seems to be marking final bursts of summer and the crisp re-introduction of autumn, cooler days and a new season - exciting times! These themes have also been very present within the staff team at the Collective as we have been working on a variety of different projects - some new and some more well established. Additionally, we have been joined by Rosie who started with the team earlier this month. Read on to find out more!
This month the Co-Pro cuppa (our informal monthly chance to connect with friends, meet new people and chat about whatever you fancy over a cuppa!) ended up centring around a discussion about the term 'empowerment' and how it can be interpreted differently in different contexts. We also explored the value of including experts by experience in research and beyond and how the significance of this is generally something that as a group we felt should be acknowledged more widely across society.
You can sign up to join us for our next Co-Pro Cuppa session which will be taking place on 7 October or there are also dates in November and December now available - sign up via our Events page!
Earlier this month, Nicc visited a care home with the UCL Vivaldi study team to meet residents and staff, participate in group activities and discuss challenges relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, testing and what the future might look like in care homes in relation to this. Nicc has been working with the research team to support them in starting to think about how to co-produce the next phase of the study, more on this soon!
In other news, Vanessa has been working with Mandy and Isaac (Collective community members) on our 'Associate roles' work to co-produce a ‘working model’, define what the 'co-producer' role looks like and develop an inclusive approach to recruitment. You can read more about the model in our update on the 'Associate Roles' work blog.
In the next few weeks, we will be releasing the recruitment call for 12 co-producers with information about the role and application process. We are planning to make this accessible, easy to follow, and enjoyable to be part of! To help with this, we will be running two information and Q&A drop-in sessions to talk you through the process and any application questions. The sessions will take place on:
Our aim is to try to live up to the Co-Production Collective values at all stages of this work and we look forward to having lots of great conversations with new as well as familiar faces! If you have any questions about the programme, please do get in touch with Vanessa (v.bennett@ucl.ac.uk).
As mentioned above, Rosie has also recently joined the Co-Production Collective Team and will be focusing on our work with NHS England & NHS Improvement. She shared a few thoughts for this blog:
Hi everybody. Having only started last week, I have been loving hearing about all of the amazing work the Collective is doing and am excited to get stuck in! Before joining the team, I worked in frontline charity roles most recently supporting individuals with complex needs facing homelessness. In this work I have been incredibly passionate about the importance of a person-led approach, and this has really drawn me to co-production. Despite living in the middle of London, I love the outdoors and spend a lot of my time looking for new places to wander!
This team update blog has been written by Makella, who has now been with us since mid July. Makella will be joining us during more Co-Pro Cuppa’s in the future and will be assisting with the development of our library of resources for co-production. 😊
To stay in touch with the latest news from us, make sure you’re signed up to our newsletter and following us on Twitter to hear it first. We hope to see you, hear from you or speak to you soon! As ever, if you have any questions or suggestions for us, please get in touch at coproduction@ucl.ac.uk
(Header photo credit: Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash).
Interested in finding out more or exploring how we could work together?
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