Author: Jessica Russell, Co-production Champion, A Better Start Southend/SAVS/Southend-on-Sea Borough Council

The challenge that COVID-19 presents to the world is the greatest that many of us have faced.

Amongst terrible personal tragedy and societal turmoil, the pandemic has also brought out the very best in citizens across the country. Individuals, communities and organisations have stepped up to help others in so many ways. Locally, we have seen how usual ways of working can be collapsed almost overnight. New services to meet local needs have been designed and mobilised in days.

Sometimes the process has been bumpy. Yet people have stuck at the task, united in a common cause. Whether the work has been getting food and medicines out to individuals or working with partners to minimise the impact of lockdown on families, people have worked together in different ways to adapt and create new services.

As Co-production Champion, jointly funded by Southend-On-Sea Borough Council and A Better Start Southend and based at Southend Association for Voluntary Service, my work suddenly changed too. As events rapidly unfolded in the first ten days of lockdown I was privileged to be able to observe and hopefully make a small contribution to the community resilience response

Led by the Borough Council, alongside partners, the activity was an emergency response. Top down vertical strategic leadership was evident, flowing from national government level. Nevertheless, local work demonstrated very strong aspects of co-production involving council officers, the voluntary sector and volunteers. Within the first few days, the Southend Coronavirus Facebook page was set up, quickly followed by the Southend Coronavirus Action line. The identification of local community ‘assets’ – resources, people, organisations and places – was central to the response and has therefore been an model of strengths-based working.

This collaborative effort provided food, medicines, shopping and other support to nearly 700 Southend households.  Organisational volunteers have completed over 300 tasks and redeployed staff the same again.

This local collaboration was no accident. In Southend-on-Sea, our local voluntary sector, A Better Start Southend and the council had already established solid foundations. From operational and strategic relationships to the Co-production Champion post, Southend had strongly positioned itself to deliver co-productive work.

Southend Borough Council’s Local Code of Governance establishes the commitment to co-production in the ‘Principles into Practice’ section. When the Code was produced at the end of 2019, no-one could have imagined the world we would find ourselves in now. Nonetheless, the need to co-produce for the future has never been greater, or the benefits more evident.

Southend’s Council Leader, Councillor Gilbert, has reflected how the recent collaborative work on coronavirus had given him “hope for the future of our amazing town”. At the national level, government are also indicating the willingness for a broad recovery conversation.

Alongside my colleagues and partners at Southend-On-Sea Borough Council and A Better Start Southend and based at Southend Association for Voluntary Service, we are reflecting on this experience and will bring this together over Co-Production Week and I will be writing this up in a piece themed on ‘Co-production in a Crisis”. Instinct tells us there our experience blazes a trail for a collaborative future.

What is clear is that the damage that the pandemic has wreaked economically, socially and individually are combining as huge drivers for change. This is a genuine opportunity for a step-change in how things are done at the local level. In the midst of the confusion that COVID-19 caused, we have learned that problems are best tackled as a collective not as individuals. Are we now willing to discover the transformative power that resides in the relationships between people, not in hierarchical structures? Are we willing to try and unlock this community potential through co-production? Do we have the courage to ask what the community wants to bring about in their home town during the recovery phase?

Recovery and renewal is not a destination. It is the next phase of a difficult journey. It may be different, but it will be, in some ways, as hard as the one that preceded it. The good news is that in Southend-On-Sea we have diverse perspectives as well as many common goals. If we choose to work on these goals together, in honest and courageous co-productive relationships, I believe all of us have a role to play in our community’s recovery.

References

Local code of governance (Southend-on-Sea)

Coronavirus Framework for Decision-making (Scotland)

Medium.com – Finding Hope in Crisis