A definition
“Co-Facilitation – Having more than one facilitator at a workshop, or co-facilitation, is good for many reasons. It allows you to share the responsibility with someone else and each trainer brings his or her own strengths to the workshop. It also makes learning more interesting for the participants. However, it is critical to coordinate well with your co-facilitator so the presentations and activities go smoothly.”
Source: Worldbank.org [accessed 2019]
In the world of learning disability, co-production and co-facilitation are common place/ expected/ considered good practice. What this should mean is that people with lived experience play an equal role in developing and sharing information, be that decision making, research, evaluation, meetings, reports and conferences alongside people that don’t have that first hand lived experience.
Somehow via osmosis co-production and co-facilitation have become part of my thinking without me ever being aware of the why?
There is much research on this subject and I have no intention of writing this blog in an academic style (with references), instead I wanted to share with you my recent experiences that have led me to question the “why”.
First of all just watch this very quick YouTube clip from a conference that I attended recently:
The (un)Ordinary Conference – highlights
I have been aware of Stay Up Late for many years, but this was the 1st time I have ever attended one of their conferences and they have led me to challenge my own thinking on this subject. When I co-facilitate 9 times out of 10 be it at a conference, presenting at a meeting or facilitating a teaching session the evaluations show that the most amount of learning, and biggest impact is always made by the person who has a lived experience.
So the next question I have inevitably started to ask myself is:
- Does our programme of work always need to be co-facilitated? Or can parts of it be led and influenced by our stakeholders who are experts by experience?
The answer for me is not a simple one (and I still think there is a place for co-facilitation) but actually for the most part if we are working with people equally (and supporting them to have a true voice and to become leaders in their own right) then the answer has to be …..
“no we don’t always need to co-facilitate”
The Stay Up Late conference for me is a shining example that demonstrates that where people with lived experience of learning disabilities and / or autism are happy to lead and share and are supported to do this in a meaningful way, they should be given the opportunity.
“Scott takes on his most formidable challenge yet”
Did you know our programme ambassador and expert consultant is undertaking his most formidable challenge yet raise money for the SeeAbility charity.
GOOD LUCK SCOTT
Don’t forget
The HEE South Intellectual Disability workforce programme started way back in 2015, and at that time we start to be able to support our stakeholders to overcome there workforce challenges. For many of those early pilot project the work has be completed and every thing they did and learning has been shared via reports, easy read summaries (with all the associate resources ) freely available to everyone. We currently have resources covering the following subjects:
- Anticipatory Care Calendar
- Communication
- Community of Practice
- Deafblind
- Employment
- End of Life care
- Epilepsy
- Experts by experience
- Families
- Outcome tools
- Service redesign
- Training
In addition we also have more pilots underway covering other areas such as children and young people, health navigation, mental health, obesity, positive behavioural support, recovery colleges, simulation, transition and vision. If you want to find out who we are supporting, how to get in touch with them and what they are up to click here.
Request for support
Over the last few months we have announced a number of project areas we need your support with. Most of the deadlines have now passed and we will be announcing which organisation will be taking these project forwards over the coming months. We still have one request for support open details and deadlines for these are below:
Don’t miss out on a chance to support the workforce to innovate and develop so that they can offer even better care and support so that people can live the life they deserve.
Don’t forget
If you want to become a stakeholder and get weekly email updates click here.
If you want to get in touch to tell us what you think about this blog or any other related matters email us at SouthID@hee.nhs.uk .
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Workforce Development for & with People with Intellectual Disabilities 