Co-production in lockdown

• SCIE: COVID-19 advice for social care
• SUST Sheffield: Trainers and consultants with lived experience of mental health problems.

The arbitrary diktats of decision makers are not necessarily malevolent and uncaring, but their consequences can be felt as if they were. The manifold achievements of movements for social change have made the world a better place for many of us, but they are yet to radically alter the status quo, which remains intact to further the cause of vested interests. We might be all in it together, but some of us are in it more deeply than others.

One of the consequences of the response from health and social care organisations to the emergence of COVID-19 has been to side-line ideas like co-production, to treat them as luxuries that can be explored at leisure once more important and pressing demands have been dealt with. This approach represents a form of paternalism that is diametrically opposed to the values that underpin co-production.

I do not doubt that including people with lived experience of a range of disabilities would have resulted in a better response to the suffering caused by the pandemic. Fewer people would have died and more people would have flourished.

The task facing co-production activists who are grounded in their commitment to fighting for the rights of disabled people is to find new ways of working together with the aim of making the idea of ‘Nothing about us without us’ a living reality.

And the duty of decision makers is to act on what we say.

• Patrick is Co-ordinator of SUST, the Sheffield based network of trainers and consultants with lived experience of mental health problems.
• Patrick tweets @pwtc_wood