By Heather Sloan on behalf of the Aye Mind Collaborative
@heatsloan

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” (Benjamin Franklin)

What is co-production and why does it matter?

The Scottish Co-production Network defines co-production as a way of making decisions that combines everyone’s strengths so that we can work together to achieve positive change. It’s about shifting the balance of power in our public services and communities.

I have a background in community development and community engagement spanning over 30 years and the term co-production is essentially the way we worked back in the early 1980s with our communities of interest. It was instilled in me to involve those that were affected by the issues at hand in the design and delivery of an activity to best address these concerns.

How did we use a co-production approach when developing Aye Mind?

In the original development and design of the Aye Mind site, we were keen to involve and include young people in a meaningful and resourceful way and not just as a tokenistic tick-box exercise. We wanted to know what they felt were the key issues, topics, and supports needed to support digital approaches to youth mental health.

We, therefore, used a co-production approach to hear their views and experiences and to work alongside them to develop the Aye Mind site together.

1) Hearing the views and experiences of young people and those that support them

During 2013 and 2014, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde collaborated with a range of local young people aged between 15 and 21 from a geographical spread and communities of interest. Alongside this, we engaged with a wide range of partners to explore how they used the internet in relation to mental health – the programme was called “Project 99”.

As adults, it was really important for us to get the ‘insider intel’ and not merely read what the research articles were telling us. As well as young people’s insights we also wanted to know what ‘youth work’ and related staff who support young people’s mental health and wellbeing needed to support them to do their jobs. There was an abundance of rich conversations as well as visionary ideas that came from the process that you can read on our Project 99 page. After 2 years of engaging in dialogue and idea exchanging we mutually planned an away day where we could explore the design process further.

2) Designing the Aye Mind website together

Rewind to a hot sunny day back on Saturday 25th of August 2015; we ran a workshop at Riverside Museum in Glasgow with 12 young people from various mental health organisations including; Y-Sort It, See Me, and GAMH. The aim of the workshop was to support young people to produce GIFs and memes addressing mental health that they could share with their peers online. The GIF-making workshop was a great way to have a discussion about mental health. The process would allow a safe space whereby real issues could be explored. It was non-threatening and the young people’s voices were heard through the ‘stories’ they created through the GIF designs. We had originally worked with these groups in their own ‘safe haven’ in their youth work settings, gathering their ideas of what could be included on the Aye mind platform.

The GIFs produced formed a key part of the website and the messages the young people were giving us shaped a lot of the content.

What were the benefits to adopting a co-production approach?

It would have been easier to just run with some themes and our design partner ‘Snook’ could have worked their magic and come up with a design principled website. However, by using a co-production approach we saw so many benefits – there was mutual respect, reciprocity and indeed learning. The young people learned about the technical aspects of web design and the Web designers learned all about young people’s experiences and views of the online world they lived in. We even trained the designers in suicide prevention and mental health first aid as they were so passionate about mental health as a result of this co-production approach with the young people!

While there are numerous benefits to co-production, it’s also important to remember that co-production is by no means a ‘quick fix’. It can take a very long time if you are to do it justice. We felt, however, that the time invested was worthwhile and indeed was an ethical approach in the design of what was to become the ‘Aye Mind’ website.

What did we learn along the way?

We learned a lot in the process about how to do co-production, what works, and what doesn’t work. Here are some of our key learnings:

• The process has to be meaningful and not tokenistic – active listening is key!
• Ensure there is an equal partnership and not a ‘them and us’- mentality
• It’s crucial to develop shared values, purpose, goals, and decision-making whilst recognising there may be a bit of compromise required at times
• Keep expectations real – don’t promise something that can’t be delivered; however don’t stifle creativity to look at other solutions
• Last but not least, make it fun!

Importantly, the insights that the young people and those that supported them shared with us all those years ago continue to feature across the Aye Mind site today. It’s a real testament to the lasting impact and legacy that co-production can have when it’s done meaningfully.