Our commissioning approach for adults, children and families in Gateshead - commissioning priorities 2024-2025
15. Engagement and co-production
These are fundamental to commissioning good practice and will be a key feature of the future commissioning programme in Gateshead. Effective engagement and co-production take time and traditionally there are challenges for local authorities in building them into the scheduling of commissioning and recommissioning projects. The future approach in Gateshead will be managed within the staffing resources available in Commissioning.
The IASCS Directorate is finalising a new "framework" for co-production, promoting best practice across social work operations, direct service delivery and commissioning. The framework has drawn upon models of practice around the country and will be published via the council's website. Commissioning is reviewing and developing its engagement and co-production work through workshop methodology involving staff across the service. This work will result in a new co-production plan for commissioning, as part of the IASCS framework and will link to wider corporate engagement practice and intelligence data to support it.
The commissioning plan for co-production and engagement will address:
- long term development of representation of lived experience around priority themes and user groups
- use of short-term focus groups for commissioning projects
- engagement with communities in Gateshead, whether of geographical localities, minority ethnic/ cultural communities or communities of interest
- structured participation of people with lived experience including carers in service reviews and procurement
- more comprehensive embedding of service user and carer feedback and experience within quality assurance and contract management