July team update - getting in the swing of summertime

With the sun high in the sky (and a fair few showers here and there!), it's time for another update about what we as community have been up to and what lies ahead.

Before we do, we just wanted to say a big thank you to those of you who applied to get involved in our Communications Sub Group and the Allies Working Group who will be co-producing an inclusive way to recruit to our Allies Group. There was lots of interest in these opportunities and unfortunately, we didn’t have enough spaces to include everybody at this stage. However, if you were unsuccessful there will be lots of other ways to get involved in the future with these and other projects, including those listed in the ‘Get Involved’ section below.  

Ethics Project launch

As you may have read in this month’s newsletter, on 29 June we launched a project report and guidance document that explores how ethics works in relation to co-production, public involvement and engagement. To launch this project we held a round table discussion hosted by Helen Craig and featuring Jennifer Bostock (Research ethics and PPI advisor at King's College London) and Gail Adams(Director of Compliance and Assurance Research and Innovation at UCL), Sarah Knowles (Research Fellow in Knowledge Mobilisation Centre for Reviews and Dissemination University of York) and the rest of the team (Lynn, Jade and Emeline)  that had over 85 people in attendance. You can read more about this project in our blog as well as access the project report and guidance. There has been an overwhelmingly positive response on Twitter and we look forward to seeing how the conversation progresses. Please help spread the word about this project if you have any feedback for us please email coproduction@ucl.ac.uk

What else have we been up to this month?

• Yesmin and Nicc held drop-in advice sessions for UCL students completing the Masters in Public Health who are starting their dissertations about co-production and Public and Patient Involvement. We ran a session with the students at the start of their course back in November 2022 aimed at helping them to understand the benefits of involving people with lived experience in their research, what co-production involves, and how to go about it.
• Laura and Nicc hosted a forum at the British Sociological Association Early Career Researchers Conference which enabled participants to share previous experiences of co-producing research, helped them to develop pathways to overcome obstacles, and to create a supportive network. They also discussed the challenges that Early Career Researchers might face at this stage in their careers around co-producing research and provided support for them.
• Nicc spoke at the Healthcare Text Analytics Conference (HealTAC) about the HIPS research project, which is about integrating hospital outpatient letters into the healthcare data space.
• There was a meeting of the Co-Production Collective Allies Group. Meeting notes will be available later this month.
• Macmillan and Green Lane Mosque, Birmingham – Following two community co-production workshops in January and March this year we have been writing up a final summary with all the knowledge gathered during the events. This is intended to help Macmillan address the learning gathered and to support action to address health inequalities in cancer care and develop their impact in this area.
• Not another Co-production Festival – Vanessa and Isaac were part of the festival in Birmingham organised by Ideas Alliance, People’s Voice Media and featuring Camerados. Many different aspects of health and social care were represented with clay pottery, poetry and music sessions. Alongside this were role-plays around social care, and open questions and conversations about experiences of co-production, and honing our listening skills ‘over a brew’. Gobby also showcased their work, including their involvement in the Value of Co-production project.
• Community Networker Conference - Nicc and Isaac attended this conference by People's Voice Media in Liverpool which focused on the value of lived experience and how this can be used as a tool for creating equitable futures. Attendees will be able to explore how lived experience stories can help to address systemic issues such as racism, ableism and sexism that are currently damaging social progress.

Coming up

• We will be holding our first working group meeting about how to co-create an inclusive way to recruit to the Allies group.
• As part of the 'Measuring what success looks like in co-production’ project (funded by Research England) we are working in partnership UCL Evaluation Exchange and Compost, our community partner to co-produce an application process to select and support 5-7 projects that will receive £10-15,000 each along with the teams support. More details to be announced later this month.
• Priya, Cecily and Nicc are running a second co-production session with the Association of Directors of Public Health London. The session is about developing a toolkit to support public health practitioners to co-produce work with communities, in particular with a focus on tackling racism in public health.
• Sarah, Sajid and Nicc are part of the 5th session for our Commissioning for communities training programme in partnership with Ideas Alliance and Collaborate CIC.
• Nicc and Isaac will be continuing their work with Disability Rights UK to help them to embed co-production into the way that they work as an organisation.

Get Involved

Still looking for co-producers with connections to Croydon

We are currently working on a project with Croydon Council to help shape the way the Council works with residents. If you live, work or study in Croydon currently, or have done in the past we would love to hear from you as we are looking for two co-producers to be part of the team. The project is running from now until February/March 2024 and co-producers will be paid in line with our payment policy. If you’d like to find out more get in touch on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk

Have your say in whether our core values are still fit for purpose

As a Co-Production Collective community, we are working on co-creating our new strategy. We have a session on 27 July between 13:00-15:00 (UK time) where will focus on revisiting our values to see if they are still fit for purpose. We are hoping to engage as many people as possible from the Co-Production Collective community in this exciting co-creation journey. Everyone is welcome to join, whether you're new to our community or have been around for years!  Please don't worry if you missed the first two sessions, we will share information in advance to bring you up to speed. You can sign up to join the session via the events page on our website.

New safeguarding policy available for your input soon

Thanks to those of you who have contributed to our safeguarding policy so far. We will be sharing the latest version of our co-created safeguarding policy for your input later in the month.

Launching our new LinkedIn Page

Further to feedback we had from our end of year survey we have just launched a new Co-Production Collective page on LinkedIn. We hope to use this new communication channel champion co-production and reach more people who may be interested in what we do. If you are a member of LinkedIn please follow us and if you have any ideas for content please let us know by emailing coproduction@ucl.ac.uk

Co-Pro Cuppas

Thanks to those of you who joined us at our July Co-Pro Cuppa. We discussed a range of topics including how to get started on co-production projects and evaluation of their outcomes. If you're interested in learning more about our upcoming project on ‘Measuring what success looks like in co-production’, we invite you to read our blog about this work. Stay tuned, as we will be providing further updates on this venture later this month.

Our next Co-Pro Cuppas will take place on the 1 August at 11:00 am UK time and on 7 September at 12:00 noon UK time. You can find out more and sign up via the events page on our website.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about our work please get in contact by emailing us on coproduction@ucl.ac.uk

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