Lay or/and professional: Those who are affected by the issue from the public

Our aspiration in the Irish case study was that lessons learned, skills acquired, and experiences of empowerment would be lasting and repeatable. In particular, we expected service users to experience a sense of growth and confidence in their abilities and how these positively affect their lives.

We expected there may be opportunities for partnership results to be disseminated to broader communities of service users, students and academic communities. These opportunities should be planned and delivered using the same principles of co-production used in the project itself. In particular, the dissemination methods should be appropriate and sensitive to the needs of service users in terms of language, style and transmission of ideas through face-to-face and virtual platforms. 

A positive outcome would be for service users to find the confidence to gain qualifications and skills in teaching and learning where they become more permanent partners in delivering important dimensions of social work education and professional training.

Links to: Co-production - Social Work England

Reference: MacDermott, D., & Harkin-MacDermott, C. (2020). Co-producing a shared stories narrative model for social work education with experts by experience. Practice, 32(2), 89-108.

Hatton, K (2017) A critical examination of the knowledge contribution service user and carer involvement brings to social work education, Social Work Education, 36:2, 154-171, DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2016.1254769

As an exercise, try to reflect on each package. You can either first choose the reason WHY (problem to be solved, task to be delivered) and the CONTEXT, or you can select a group which you would like to empower or support to be more heard or to reach a better position in some community or even in your school. Use questions you find relevant to your intentions, modify them, or create your own. For reflection, you can use the relevant parts of this Practice guide. We also recommend reading the more detailed material O1, O2 and O3, available here.