Doing With – Not To: Focus Groups and Co-production at Positive Support Group
Image by Stefan Cosma
Co-production is essential for person-centred and effective support. However, although many organisations strive to include clients in their support, truly co-produced support may sometimes be more challenging to achieve in practice.
One way to increase the opportunities to develop support services informed by client views and perspectives is through focus groups. Taking a range of client perspectives into account, these structured discussions bring together a diverse group of people to share their insights, experiences, and opinions on a specific topic.
At Positive Support Group (PSG), focus groups played a vital role when developing Life Resilience Support (LRS), a model within our Hospital Discharge Service which supports looked-after children and their networks. By directly engaging with foster carers, looked-after children, and social workers, we were able to ensure that clients’ views on the type of support they hoped to receive and their main goals shaped our model and methods of support.
The Role of Focus Groups in Developing the LRS Model
From the outset, the LRS team prioritised engaging with social workers, foster carers, and young people themselves. Their insights directly shaped the design and implementation of our services, ensuring they were relevant and impactful.
The focus groups were held at two critical stages: the initial development phase and midway through mobilisation. Initially, the sessions aimed to understand what was – and wasn’t – working in the existing support systems. Questions revolved around resilience, capacity building for foster carers, and strategies to prevent crises before they escalated. By the midway point, we revisited these groups, incorporating feedback from individual clients to refine our approach further.
Proactive Support
One significant finding from the focus groups was the challenge of proactively addressing issues before they reached crisis levels. Focus-group members described that foster carers often engaged with training only when a situation had already deteriorated, highlighting the need for more accessible and preventative resources.
Improving Accessibility and Relevance
Additionally, the language and content of our materials needed to be more accessible and relevant. For example, young people emphasised the importance of focusing on cultural competencies rather than superficial skills like hair care. One young person poignantly remarked, “Don’t call us LAC – we are just kids.” This feedback underscored the importance of using respectful, person-centred language.
Broader Impacts on PSG
The emphasis on co-production has had far-reaching impacts across PSG. By taking experts by experience seriously, we have enhanced the quality and relevance of our services. This commitment is evident in initiatives such as translated documents tailored to individual needs, personalised visuals, and an ongoing focus on rapport building.
Co-production has also enriched our organisational culture. The inclusion of neurodiverse perspectives within our taskforce has informed both what we do and how we do it. Feedback from stakeholders has consistently been positive, with high social validity scores reflecting the value of our approach.
Doing With – Not To
Focus groups have been instrumental in PSG’s journey towards co-production and person-centred support. By listening to and collaborating with those directly impacted by our services, we have created a model that is not only effective but also respectful and empowering. At its core, co-production embodies our commitment to partnership, ensuring that support is not something we do to people but something we build with them.