Report transcript in: Not another co-production project learning festival interviews Sarah

Please Report the Errrors?

Hello.

Uh, if you'd like to

tell us your name and maybe something about yourself.

Um, my name is Sarah,

and

I love doing fast and scary things

such as

not climbing

and

going on the back of my partner's motorbike.

Skydiving when I get the chance.

Oh, my

God.

OK,

It's always the quiet ones. I really was not expecting that.

Ok, uh, and

can you tell us?

Well, let's talk about like, the day we've had at the coproduction festival.

What were your thoughts before you came?

was just

Yeah. So, um, I know a few of the people who've helped to coordinate the day

and

had some good chats at a conference recently up in Sheffield.

Um, as soon as I heard that this was happening, I was like, I've gotta be there.

Um,

so I've come today and just got amongst it and joined in with as much as I can,

and it's been really great.

anything surprise you,

uh, the amount that they were able to fit into the day

and all the different stuff that was going on simultaneously, Um,

it felt like it would be really chaotic or kind of overcrowding or overlapping.

But it wasn't and it all worked really well together. And

it was really nice that people had

options of things that they could

choose to be involved with,

that they felt drawn towards or interested in.

Um, it's a really nice mix of, like, creative stuff, musical stuff,

artistic, talky stuff for people that like talking,

um, and some good think and reflect the

sort of stuff as well.

it's not a very clinical space, is it?

How do you think that impacted on you and everyone else today?

Um, I mean,

we were just saying a minute ago how like one of the first things

when you walk through the door this morning was the name badge thing.

So,

um, make your own name badge.

Mine's got lovely smiley faces and feathers on it,

and I use lots of different colour pens to write my name.

Um,

and even that in itself is like a welcome activity as you walk through the door,

kind of just created that immediate feeling of quality.

Um,

of like,

shared power.

Um, nobody was asking anybody their job titles. Um,

I don't think many people have even used their surname on on the name tag.

So it was very much just

by me and you, you and that just immediately

took it away from feeling clinical or professional in any way.

It was just about people being together and that that's really special.

I think that's really what's really brought the quality of the day today.

How would that compare to a lot of other things

you might have to go to in your working life?

I think, um,

yeah, I. I work in the health and social care space quite a bit.

Um, I do some community development stuff as well,

but I would say predominantly health and social care, which is very

professional orientated. Um,

often it's very, um, medical model

professional gift model. If you've ever come across that as the thought

like a horrific

Yeah,

the idea that professionals know what's best for

you, and they give

your support or services to you, and you're a passive recipient of that.

And I think what we're seeing here today is much

more in the citizenship space where everyone is citizens together,

and everybody can co create or individually create

what their life should be like and how How they want

to function in the space in the community with other people.

And that feels much more like the kind of world I want to live in.

It's him.

Yeah.

And so, uh, have you had a chance to, like, mingle and chat to a few people?

Yeah.

What kind of conversations? You had

lots of

stuff.

I think

the people, quite naturally, I think,

fall into the conversation of So where do you come from?

Where do you work? What's your job? And

I've just tried to dodge

that as much as possible and just talk about

being in the space together,

because I think I'm finding that much more interesting.

Um,

so I've talked to people who we would call lived experience experts, people who are

drawing on services and support systems

to be able to live their lives and and get on with life and

and just hearing and understanding their experiences, but also like

flipping the narrative with it and actually sitting on the other

side of that and experiencing what that feels like as well.

So I had a

social care assessment. The care act social care assessment

done to me

could you just describe it slightly like what happened?

Yes. So it was a genuine local authority care act assessment format that was used.

And the person who was assessing me was playing the role of the social worker,

uh, in a manner which they had experienced themselves

receiving a correct assessment.

And I was the person receiving the assessment in in the role play.

Um,

so I didn't I didn't have much of a brief.

We just started talking and the person assessing me launched into the social

worker role and started going through their form and asking their questions.

It felt very impersonal. It felt intrusive.

Um,

I wasn't informed about my rights or my choices.

I was told what I could have and what would happen.

wasn't given any time to process the information or reflect on what I wanted to say.

And if I took too long, we moved on to the next question.

Um,

so how did that feel?

I was

raging.

Raging?

Yeah,

a really powerful experience to go through, actually,

because I work in that sector and I spend a lot of time

delivering training and consultancy around that subject,

but to actually experience that

as a full process,

Um,

and experience what those feelings must be like for the

people that actually have to go through it in real life

was quite eye opening. Actually, I was

I was feeling

so you wouldn't call it

so you wouldn't say it was a human process?

Not at all. It's not human.

And the plan was just staged.

How would it feel if that was in your own home?

Oh,

I would imagine the social worker would end up cutting the assessment short

because I wouldn't be able to

probably control my

emotional response to the situation

in in in the truth. I think

for somebody to come into your home and make those assumptions

about you in your life and the people in your life

and to dictate what your life is going to look like going forward

because you may be eligible for some social care support is just,

um, scary. Actually, it's very scary. Um,

and I suppose there could be potential consequences for people who don't just

play nice with these people who come into their homes. Yeah, Yeah, absolutely.

Well, the person ends up getting labelled. Don't they.

As a result of that, they do have an emotional response, and

that stays with them because it stays on the notes on the system.

Um, as we all know,

people very rarely have a long term social worker allocated to them.

So it's

it's you know, once that assessment has been completed,

it will get recorded on the system.

Somebody else will pick it up later on,

and the information that has been noted about your behaviour,

your willingness to cooperate,

being difficult or whatever.

You know, however, it's worded that that stays with you,

whoever works with you next and looks at your notes,

and that's really unfair

because there's no narrative behind why that happened or what it was about. Um,

and there's nothing relational about it,

nothing whatsoever. Relational about it.

It's a transactional process designed for

determining eligibility and nothing else, and often in it's.

It's also about rationing

the resource to meet that eligibility as well. So

as soon as you start thinking about rationing stuff,

you immediately have to dictate what people can and can't have,

and people are squeezed into boxes. Because of that, people

are reduced to

survival rather than living a real life,

and that's really sad.

And state.

I didn't like it.

No, I didn't like it.

Um,

and I can laugh about it because I can go home now to my life,

and I don't need to worry about a social worker

walking into my front door tomorrow or the next day.

But one day I might need support.

And

if that happens, it's quite scary to think that that's what I'm going to experience.

Yeah,

well,

I don't want to end on

raging or sad,

I want you to tell me

we'll say

the best. But if if there's a two or three, then it just

you your best

parts of the day or your

favourite takeaway.

I mean, everything I've

got involved in all day long has been fantastic, and I've got loads out of it.

I think my big light bulb moment, um,

was doing one of the workshops, um, which was called making a Mark.

And it was, um, using

drawing as an activity,

Really, I think to demonstrate co production,

and it was really interesting because I have quite a weird

internal response to it.

And then I reflected on that so that was kind of fascinating.

Um,

So we sat in a circle, we were all given a piece of paper and a pencil,

and then we were given a set of instructions to follow.

Um,

the task was to draw a face, but it was broken down into stages.

And

so, at each stage of the task, we needed to look, think and draw.

And

the looking and thinking was maybe 5, 10 seconds.

And then we were given three seconds to draw.

Once we've done the looking and thinking each time. So that's quite

a you know,

you feel quite panicked because you've got to

get your idea down on paper very quickly.

And at each stage of the process, you just drew one element of the face.

So we started off with the shape of the head.

And then we passed our drawing to the person to the right of us.

And then we received the drawing from the person to the left of us.

And then we did the next stage,

which was the eyes and so on until we got a complete face.

And as we were passing the paper around each time I have this real feeling of.

I don't want somebody to draw on my picture

and

they're not going to draw it. The way I see it in my head, it's gonna look different

because it's their drawing and not my drawing.

And then I reflected on that, and it was just like a really powerful

light bulb. We because I was like, That's co production.

And that's why it's really hard to embed co production

because often the people with the power

who are doing the

production

really, really don't feel comfortable sharing power with others.

They don't want to share their drawing.

They don't want other people to draw on their picture.

They don't want other people to bring their ideas and

create a different shape to what they have in their

head of how something should look and that that was

my big light bulb moment and I was just like,

Ah,

so so after I reflected on that for a few minutes.

The takeaway was actually authentic.

Coproduction doesn't work unless the people leading it

have experienced it themselves

because

you can't

make something happen.

You can't embed a culture change and a different way of doing unless you feel it

and you experience it yourself and say, Yeah, that's my big takeaway.

Today was a mic drop

that was brilliant. Thank you so much, Sarah.

And I'm glad it's been such an awesome day for all of us.

Thank you very

much.

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Posted By

Author

peterlord

Post date

15/07/2023