North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has criticised the Welsh Government for failing to embrace co-production.
Following the Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children on Volunteering Week, Mr Isherwood, asked him to address “concerns that that smarter, best-value-for-money, invest-to-save approach hasn’t been embraced.”
He said: “At the end of the last Assembly, for example, Welsh Government cuts to child contact centres and cuts to funding for specialist intervention services supporting families through their relationship breakdown will impact on other services, generating far higher costs, for example, for health, education and social services; or the 9 per cent cut to local county voluntary charities, which Flintshire Local Voluntary Council said in a letter to me would devastate their ability to support more user-led preventative and cost-effective services. In other words, using the more limited money smarter, we can safeguard those services by working differently.
“How do you respond to the Statement by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action that Welsh Government and the sector need to refresh current engagement mechanisms, to develop, promote and monitor a programme for action based on co-production and common ground? Their report on citizen-directed support said that there’s scope for local authorities, health boards and the third sector to work much more imaginatively to develop better services that are closer to people, more responsive to needs and add value by drawing on community resources. In fact, replacing hierarchies, power and control with real engagement, better lives and more cohesive communities.
Mr Isherwood also asked how the Welsh Government will engage with the newly launched Co-production Network for Wales.
“I was a guest at that launch on 26 May in mid Wales with representatives from the public sector and the third sector from every corner of Wales—a packed event, with presentations ranging from Monmouthshire County Council to a session I co-chaired with an officer from Flintshire County Council.
“The findings that that group reported included: campaigning for change within the Welsh Government, turning the system upside down, challenging people and the systems that restrict us. Responding to, perhaps, Professor Edgar Cahn, the Washington civil rights lawyer, who developed the concept of co-production to explain how important neighbourhood-level support systems are for families and communities and how they can be rebuilt—he spoke at that event. This is a movement that began in the 1970s; it wasn’t a response to austerity, it was how to tackle deeply rooted problems in communities—in that case, in America, but they also exist here.”
In his response the Cabinet Secretary said: “There are many organisations who I know do a tremendous job in all our communities, but the reality is that in the last term of Government we were restricted by £1.9 billion less money coming into the Welsh economy because of the UK Government.”
Mr Isherwood added: “Another Welsh Government, but they still don’t get it. If only they would listen, they could use funding better, improve outcomes and thereby help public services save money.
“Co-production is a democratic and effective method of commissioning, designing, delivering and evaluating public services in an equal and reciprocal relationship between service professionals, people using services and their communities, working side by side to provide solutions which benefit all, harnessing the experience, knowledge and abilities of all participants – a previously untapped resource. Where activities are co?produced in this way, both services and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change”.