Co-production of better outcomes for children and young people: Dr Elke Loeffler, Strathclyde Business School

Event Date: 5 February 2020

Speaker: Dr. Elke Loeffler, Strathclyde Business School, Department of Work, Employment and Organisation

Time: 2-3pm

Location: Room SW1.07, Stenhouse Wing, Strathclyde Business School

Improving outcomes for children and young people is clearly a matter for family, friends, neighbours … and public services. However, the balance of responsibilities between these different stakeholders is far from clear. While social development has always emphasised that ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, public policy has long focused on the role of schools for improving outcomes for children and young people. My research has explored the middle way between these exclusive ‘civil society’ and ‘public services’ pathways to outcomes – namely user and community co-production of public services and outcomes, working with staff, managers and politicians of public service organisations.

In a previous empirical research project, I have explored through a major survey in Germany, the extent to which citizens have worked with local public services and in self-organised activities to improve the outcomes of young people. This demonstrated that only a relatively small proportion of citizens engaged in co-production with local public services to improve the outcomes for young people, but a very large proportion undertook other activities in civil society with this objective. This raises the question of how citizens who are contributing to public value through their civil society activities can be tempted to work more closely in co-production with public service organisations to improve public value through this pathway as well.

In a separate in-depth case study of services for young people in an English county, I explored a range of pathways in which co-production made a major impact on the employability and other outcomes of young people. This study raised the question of the most appropriate use of co-production for the prevention, detection and treatment of social problems or rehabilitation when the social problem has occurred. The study suggested that co-production can be highly effective in prevention which raises the question why co-production is still very much underused in this pathway to publicly-desired outcomes.

In this presentation, I will present my current research on barriers to co-production by and for young people, building on these previous studies. I will present a model for how barriers arise, a summary of current research evidence on what appear to be the main barriers and a research design to explore in more detail both these barriers and the strategies which are currently being used to tackle them – my intention is to calibrate this model of barriers empirically through a survey and to explore these potential strategies through case study analysis.

Published: 4 February 2020