1st July - National Co-Production Week

Happy National Co-Production Week! Co-production gives people an opportunity to work as equals and help to shape services that are truly fit for purpose. At Southend on Sea City Council we’re championing co-production!

This week we're celebrating by hosting a "Showcase Your Success" edition of our Southend Co-Production Collective meeting. Southend City Council staff and partner organisations will be sharing examples of successful co-production work over the last year and supporting each other to continue to raise the profile of co-production.

One very successful example at Southend City Council, is our Tackling Poverty Strategy which started back in 2022. The aim of the strategy is to support people born into poverty, and those who fall into poverty, to be able to move out of poverty.

We started by launching an online survey called "Help shape our new Tackling Poverty Strategy", and collected 643 responses, We also held an engagement week, where we visited food provision settings to engage with the public face-to-face. We asked people:

What’s working well?

What isn’t working well?

What ‘s important to you in the future?

26 people attended two workshops which were held at a local community venue. The mix of people included 15 local people with lived experience of poverty from a diverse range of backgrounds which included single parents, young families, pensioners, people with no recourse to public funds, people from ethnic minorities, mental health, and homelessness backgrounds. Alongside them working as equals, were staff from Southend-on-Sea City Council, local health services and local voluntary sector groups.

Not only did this work help to form the foundations of the council’s Tackling Poverty Strategy, but it also produced other outcomes including:

• Setting up warm spaces over the city during the winter months.
• Distributing £25,000 worth of slow cookers and electric blankets to residents most in need through our partners in the community and voluntary sector.
• Supporting 8,523 residents through the Household Support and Emergency support fund in 2022/23 with fuel costs.
• Supporting a range of pathway to work programmes that has helped 523 Southend residents to upskill such as run by HALO and ABSS parent programmes.
• Southend Action for Volunteering Services (SAVS) have set up a volunteering bureau for the city.
• We published thousands of Cost-of-Living booklets in 2022 and 2023 to offer residents useful information and support in key areas such as fuel poverty, financial help, and food poverty.

If you'd like to find out more about co-production or how to get involved, whether you're a Southend resident or a local business/organisation, please contact me - LucieBabbington@southend.gov.uk