As well as the focus on clinical leadership and insight, IMPACT, the East Midlands Provider Collaborative (IMPACT), considers the experiences of service users in all the work that they do and includes co-production as an integral part of their overriding vision and strategy. They employ people with lived experience within their collaborative team and have a renumeration policy for service users who contribute their time to share their feedback and experiences.
An active service user reference group is also in place and along with co-production forums, feeds into the decisions and strategies made by the clinical reference group to ensure that the views of service users are being considered in any new strategies being implemented.
IMPACT have also ensured that co-production features within the work they undertake as a collaborative with their integrated care board (ICB) partners. For example, the East Midlands learning disability and autism pathway forum is a group hosted by the collaborative which includes representatives from all five ICBs to progress issues connected to social care such as housing and community placements, as well as clinical experts. Members include co-production volunteers whose feedback is considered as an important component of decision making.
As part of this process, lived experience facilitators go out and engage with service users from groups whose voices are less widely heard, to ensure that co-production forums are including representatives from all backgrounds and experiences, and equity is embedded throughout.
The learnings they have gathered in this way have been included in their collaborative strategy and are now being implemented into their commissioning intentions for the next three-year period.