Co‐production and social innovation in street‐level employability services: Lessons from services with lone parents in Scotland

Abstract

The United Kingdom, as an exemplar liberal welfare state, has been characterized as in the vanguard of "work-first" activationdeploying high levels of compulsion and standardized employability services that seek to move people from welfare to work as quickly as possible. However, despite the extension of welfare conditionality to excluded groups such as lone parents, government-led, work-first employability programmes have often proved ineffective at assisting the most vulnerable to escape poverty or even just to progress in the labour market. We argue that alternative approaches, defined by co-production and social innovation, have the potential to be more successful. We draw on a study of local services targeting lone parents led by third 33 sector-public sector partnerships in five localities in Scotland. Our research identifies a link between programme governance and management (defined by co-governance and collaborative partnership-working) and co-produced street-level services that deliver benefits in terms of social innovation and employability. We draw on 90 interviews with lone parents, and more than 100 interviews with delivery stakeholders and street-level workers, to identify factors associated with positive social and employability outcomes. The article concludes by identifying potential lessons for the governance and delivery of future services targeting vulnerable groups.2. Throughout this article we have used the term keyworker to refer to street-level workers performing these roles. A variety of terms were used by MIW partnerships to describe these functions including development workers, support workers and keyworkers.Co-production and social innovation in street-level employability services

Exploring, measuring and enhancing the coproduction of health and well-being at the national, regional and local levels through comparative case studies in Sweden and England: the ‘Samskapa’ research programme protocol

“…Academic reviews of coproduction highlight—with some exceptions32—little critical engagement with issues of power, power relations and representation and whether typical patterns of participation serves to make services more or less inclusive (or do they simply reinforce existing social inequalities?) 9 18.…”

Street-Level Practice, Personalisation and Co-Production in Employability: Insights from Local Services with Lone Parents

“…In Scotland, the geographical focus for our research, previous studies identified a strong culture of partnership-working between local government and the third sector that has provided an alternative to contracted-out, work-first activation (Lindsay et al, 2018a). And grant funding provided by charities and nondepartmental public bodies has allowed for innovative local experiments in coproducing high quality employability services (Lindsay et al, 2018c). It is one such innovative initiativeco-producing services with LPsthat provided the context for our research.…”

“…So, co-production promises tailored, personalised services, but crucially sees users as equal partners in shaping those services. There are clear potential benefits for public services and their usersservices may be more tailored to users' needs (Burns, 2013) and more generally better-informed (and therefore potentially of higher quality) because of users' feedback and insights (Pestoff, 2012); users may feel empowered by having a clear influence over the services that they engage with (Verschuere et al, 2012), and may commit more of their 'assets' (in the form of commitment and energy) to making services work (Lindsay et al, 2018b); and their collective engagement and support for services and peer service users may have positive impacts on social capital within targeted communities and groups (Lindsay et al, 2018c). (For further discussion of the concept of co-production, see for example: Burns, 2013;Crompton, 2018;Löffler and Bovaird, 2018).…”

Making welfare conditional: A street‐level perspective

“…In an Australian study, Considine et al (2011) showed that quasi‐markets did not meet the expectations of more flexible and personalized service provision, arguing that this is the result of both purchaser and provider behaviour in a market context. In the same vein, Lindsay, Pearson, Batty, Cullen, and Eadson () argue that service provision models built on coproduction rather than contractualization and marketization may provide more opportunities and better conditions for the provision of tailor‐made services and for a more active involvement and participation of jobseekers.…”