Viewpoint: social care and co-production

Innovation in social care refers to developing and applying new ideas, practices, models or technologies that improve quality, accessibility, efficiency and outcomes. However, innovations are often developed without co-production with the people they most affect. When that happens, the result can be exclusion rather than progress.

Even with good intentions, services can be designed in ways that assume too much about a person, such as their preferences, needs, or access to resources. When innovation is developed without the direct involvement of people who draw on care and support, it can reflect the assumptions of service providers, commissioners or designers and the limitations of their perspective and working experience, rather than the realities of people’s lives.

For example, a digital referral system might seem efficient, but if someone has limited digital access or support needs with reading or processing information, it may be inaccessible. In some cases, people with learning disabilities, for example, may require easy-read formats, supported decision-making, or one-to-one assistance to access a service.

If this is not built into the design from the start, the service can become inaccessible by default. Likewise, a new care planning tool may not account for how people with learning disabilities may experience transitions between education, housing and health, which are areas that are often treated in isolation by service teams. These are not rare cases; they are predictable outcomes of designing without the right people in the room.

Does technology in social care unintentionally reinforce exclusion?

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) has recently explored this challenge through its work on ‘TECquity’, short for technology-enabled care equity. Part of this work focuses on how technology in social care can unintentionally reinforce exclusion if it is not developed inclusively.

We have been asking questions such as, ‘Who is this tool really for?’ Who has been involved in creating it? Who is missing? Where such questions have not been considered, there is a risk that digital tools will become another source of inequity, not because the technology itself is flawed, but because the process that shaped it did not include those with the greatest need for support.

For people with learning disabilities, these barriers can be even more pronounced. Accessible formats, easy read design, and inclusive language are too often afterthoughts, rather than core requirements from the start.

Coproduction: a solution?

Co-production offers an opportunity to transform social care innovation. Co-production is about sharing power. It means involving people who use care and support, not just consulting them, in the design, development and evaluation of services and tools. It means genuine partnerships.

If done well, co-production helps make innovation more practical (because solutions are shaped by real-life use), inclusive (because needs and preferences are built in) and trusted (because people recognise their voice in the final product).

SCIE is currently analysing national survey data from over 800 respondents (including people with lived experience, unpaid carers and social care professionals) on how co-production supports innovation. While the findings are still in development, early insights show strong support for the role of co-production in improving person-centredness, inclusion and trust.

What’s also clear is that people want co-production to be genuine, not a tick-box exercise. They want it to include diverse voices. And they want it to be embedded in day-to-day decision-making from the start, not treated as an add-on.

Embedding inclusion in innovation

To avoid exclusion, innovation must be rooted in lived experience. That means thinking about co-production not as an optional phase, but as a core method.

From the voice of lived experience, here are some practical steps:

1. Involve people early, don’t wait until plans have been decided or the prototype is built
2. Pay people for their time and expertise, equity means recognising contribution
3. Be proactive about inclusion, reach out to those who are seldom heard, don’t wait for people to come to you
4. Design for diversity from the outset, not as a retrofit
5. Give feedback on how people’s input made a difference, to build trust in the process and demonstrate impact on results.

Innovation that ignores inclusion ends up being inefficient. It leads to services that may need to be redesigned, tools that aren’t used, and communities that feel further marginalised. In contrast, inclusive innovation is more likely to meet people’s needs through continued conversation and joint working. That’s better for everyone, especially in a resource-stretched system.

If you are unsure where to start, or if your organisation wants to strengthen its approach to working with people, SCIE has recently developed a Co-production Impact resource. This is designed to provide insights into how to understand the difference that co-production is making in your work.

Launched last year, the co-produced resource has been piloted, and an updated version was released earlier this year. The tool offers a way to reflect on what’s working, where gaps remain, and what difference co-production is making. Alongside this, SCIE also offers free-to-download guides on inclusive co-production, payment for involvement, and how to get started. These resources are designed to be practical and adaptable, whatever stage you are at in embedding co-production.

Co-production week: celebration of people with lived experience

Innovation in social care is essential. But it’s not enough to just develop new ideas. We must also change how those ideas are developed and who gets to shape them.

SCIE’s annual Co-production Week, 30 June – 4 July 2025, is a celebration of the contribution people with lived experience make to creating better social care; showcasing the benefits of co-production, sharing good practice and the difference sharing power and creating equal partnerships makes in developing better ways of doing things in social care.

This year’s theme ‘Innovation through co-production’, focuses on exploring how co-production can help with innovation and how to better demonstrate the impact and difference it makes.

For anyone involved in designing or delivering care, this Co-production Week SCIE is setting you a challenge, ask yourself:

• Who holds the power in your innovation work?
• Who gets to define the problem and propose the solution?
• Whose needs are being prioritised?

If the answer doesn’t include people with lived experience, you’re not innovating, you’re guessing. And that guess might be wrong.

We don’t need to slow innovation down. We need to make it smarter, fairer and more inclusive. That starts with listening and then acting on what we hear.

Let’s stop designing for people. Let’s design with them. Together, let’s build a social care system shaped by the people it’s meant to serve.

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Matthew Ford and Tasnim Rahman, Research Analysts at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE).