Monday 1 July marks the start of Co-production Week 2024, a celebration of the power of co-production to design and develop better ways of doing things in social care.

It celebrates the benefits of co-production, shares good practice and promotes the contribution of people who access care and support in developing better social care.

The theme this year is ‘Co-production: What’s Missing?' and invites us to think about how we involve a diverse range of voices, how we help everyone access better training and development, and ensure we have clear definitions and language around co-production that everyone understands.

There are lots of events taking place during Co-production Week for you to get involved in and you can find the details on our website. We hope to see you there! 

This month, Alex interviewed fellow Our Voice member Eddie Morecroft and Co-production Officer Konrad Bakalarczyk about the exciting work they have been doing on a new easy read website, designed to make information from the council easy to read and accessible to all. 

Eddie is a person with lived experience. He is passionate about trying to make things better for people with learning disabilities and has been involved in helping the council make a difference for many years. He is a massive Harry Potter fan, so before we started the interview, I asked him about it. He said "it's my little world that I can go into at any point. If I'm having a bad day, things aren't going good, I can sit down and put it on audio and within 10 minutes I'm in that world."

Konrad is a Co-Production Officer responsible for improving accessibility of information from the council and other organisations we work with. Making sure it is presented in a way that enables people to understand it better. To get to know a bit more about Konrad before the interview, I asked him what he likes to do outside work. He said "most of my life revolves around the dog and this stops me doing a lot of things which I'm fine with because I love her to bits. But beyond that, I love gardening. I’m always growing things and I like sitting and enjoying that."

Here's the interview

Alex: What are your job roles and how do you know each other?

Konrad: We've worked together on lots and lots of different things. My job now is a Co-production Officer, but I have a responsibility for accessibility, easy read information with pictures and symbols, supporting people to take part in our consultations, surveys, or focus groups. So, it's quite broad when I talk about accessibility.

Alex: How long have you been working on easy read projects Eddie? And do you find it useful to yourself?

Eddie: I’ve been working on this project for about three years to try and set the website up along with other people who have helped along the way. It’s for anybody. If you’ve had no contact with social services, this is the place to start, because you don't want to start with the most complicated papers and everything because you won't understand them. This website is going to be here for everybody.

Konrad: We have been developing one place where people can find easy to read information, where certainly all the county council information will be and hopefully easy read information from other organisations, too.

Eddie: And we're going to put a link at the bottom if you want to read the full information.

Alex: So, the easy read is a short cut?

Konrad: We just want to boil it down to the essential stuff and as Eddie says, there’ll be a link at the bottom to the full information.

Alex: As the language on an original document might be complicated, how do you define easy read?

Konrad: No big words but explain them if you have to use them. Use large text and symbols to make it easier to understand the written text at the side of them. We use the Somerset Total Communication symbols from Somerset County Council.

Eddie: The same symbols will be used on all documents.

Konrad: If we were doing something like a policy, we would ask what are the key things that you want people to know about this document?

Alex: Being dyslexic, easy read only goes so far for me, because I don’t know how to narrow down the essence into simplified words, because I can’t even read those in some instances.

Konrad: We know that people have very personalised communication needs and easy read is one way to support staff to think; right, what is this information about? Now I need to tell somebody in a way that works for them.

Alex: Once the website is up, what’s next?

Konrad: I think the next thing we'll look at is perhaps having some spoken versions of those documents. So, you can click on the little play button.

Eddie: The council have also agreed to fund three people with learning disabilities to work on the site and easy read documents.

Konrad: Last year we ran easy read events, asking what people wanted in easy read, which were the main services the county council and health provide that people wanted information on. We gave them three or four different versions of what the website might look like and three different symbol packages to choose from. This helped us decided what the website would look like. During Co-production Week, we're going to get a group of the people that helped us the last time to have a look at where we're at now and what we could add.

The website will be launched during Co-production Week on Wednesday 3 July.

If you have any links to easy read information or documents that we can add to the website, or any questions or comments, please email Konrad konrad.bakalarczyk@nottscc.gov.uk

We previously told you about the Plumbing and Wiring project, working with carers to improve the way short breaks are accessible to them. 

Last month, two workshops took place with carers, staff and short break service providers. Over both sessions, we had 30 people join to think about what works well, what doesn’t work and what we could do to change things for the better.

The sessions were led by partners from Social Care Future, who did a great job facilitating the workshops.

A carer who joined the workshops said “it’s vital that carers, staff and outside agencies have such conversations about these things, because there was a genuine understanding and interest at the workshop in what isn’t going well. But fantastic to hear some innovative ideas and potential solutions to remedy things, which hopefully will bring good future results.”

Social Care Future are drafting a report on the outcome of the workshops with actions and recommendations as part of the project. This month we will meet with senior leaders and carers to review the outcome and agree actions to take forward. A further update will be given in the next newsletter.

If you want to find out more about this project, please email dan.godley@nottscc.gov.uk

Carers Space Notts is a co-produced network of carers and professionals. You can sign up to receive information and updates on their website. You can also find details of any upcoming meetings along with recordings and information from previous online sessions.

It’s not too late to go along to one of the 2024 Caring Roadshows that the group are co-producing. The roadshows are taking place across the county and city bringing together stall holders from a wide range of services. Free to attend, carers and their cared for can find information about all sorts of support. Find details of dates and venues on their website.