Sean Hanson, chief executive of IMPOWER, reflects on this week's NCASC conference and the power of co-production.
It's been a great week so far at this week's National Children and Adult Services Conference (NCASC). The largest gathering of social care leaders for over three years, and a great opportunity to raise the profile of important issues and compare notes on what's working locally.
As headline sponsor, IMPOWER's focus for this conference is encouraging and amplifying lived experience within child and adult services. IMPOWER believes that the provision of effective health, education and social care services must put adults, children, young people and their families at the heart of public service delivery.
IMPOWER already focuses on co-production and lived experience through its unique EDGEWORK and strengths-based approaches.
For NCASC, IMPOWER has been working in collaboration with Inclusion Unlimited, TLAP and Social Care Future facilitating activities within the ‘Let's Chat Co-production' space. Several ‘Chat' sessions are taking place over the three days including timetabled talks and discussions about the successes and challenges of co-production, led by experts. The co-production space is split into three zones: the Experience Zone, where you can step into the shoes of someone who uses our services the Collaboration Zone, where you will have an opportunity to talk to hosts with lived and professional experience, ready to answer your co-production questions, and the Feedback Zone, where attendees can share their experiences of co-production.
IMPOWER's dedication to the importance of co-production is demonstrated by its newly launched free High Needs Co-production Toolkit. The toolkit shares practical learning from IMPOWER's High Needs programme, aiming to improve the experiences and outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in alternative provision or excluded from education.
We know that harnessing lived experience to co-produce public services will make citizens' lives noticeably better, while also leaving services more resilient to manage future challenges.
