Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

Turning Point Connected Care Report 9
1.2 Policy Context
Empowering communities
One of the key aims of the new coalition government is to build a Big Society. A
Big Society is a society based around encouraging greater responsibility and
community activism so that individuals and families are able to take more control
of their own lives and local services. The principles of ‘the Big Society’ thread
through the majority of government policy, in particular the health service where
patients are encouraged to be more involved and have greater choice over
provider and treatment. The role of Health Watch will be particularly important to
ensure that people are able to be active participants in the system by having
access to all of the information they need to make a well informed choice.
In the Big Society, charities, voluntary groups and a new generation of
community organisers will help tackle some of the most persistent and
entrenched social problems and barriers that exist to accessing services. In
short, it involves giving greater power to both individuals and communities;
“The Big Society is a society with much higher levels of personal, professional,
civic and corporate responsibility; a society where people come together to
solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities; a society
where a leading force for progress is social responsibility, not state control” 1
(Building a Big Society, 2010, pg.1).
Giving more control to communities and empowering local people to come
together and to take responsibility for addressing local issues is at the heart of
the Big Society. In particular, there is a real emphasis on providing the
mechanisms for local people to play a role in shaping and designing services
through co-production. According to nef and NESTA (2010);
“Co-production means delivering public services in an equal and reciprocal
relationship between professionals, people using services, their families and
their neighbours. Where activities are co-produced in this way, both services
and neighbourhoods become far more effective agents of change” 2 .
Big Society seeks to reposition individuals as active agents in the design and
delivery of services, recognising that they have valuable opinions and
experiences to bring to the table, which can be used to influence service
redesign.
Co-production is a workable mechanism for realising the coalition’s vision for the
Big Society as it brings together service users, providers and commissioners
leading to social action and change. Models of co-production, such as peer
research, bridge the gap between the community and services to arm service
users with the necessary skills to come together to address local issues.
1 Conservative Party Big Society manifesto. April 2010. pg 1
2 nef and NESTA (2010) Right Here, Right Now: Taking co-production into the mainstream. London:
NESTA