Research on the potential for establishing a National Centre for Independent Living in Wales - Co-production

The Research Co-production Team produced an overall vision for the research project, the co-production approach and the evaluation. Co-production was agreed as ‘an approach to working together in equal partnership for equal benefit’ and a range of principles to aid working together amongst team members were agreed. The shared ambitions were to learn how to produce social research together, which would improve the quality and use of evidence to inform decisions affecting disabled people. It was a prototyping experiment to test the limits to which a Government Social Research report could be co-produced. The extent to which ambitions were achieved will be the topic of a separate evaluation report and are not included in this report.

The team combined lived experience of disability with expertise in disability rights and social research (both academic and Government) and brought together DRTF Working Group Chairs, Welsh Government officers:

• The Chairs represented a wealth of lived experience of disability, knowledge and expertise (including academic expertise in disability rights) and had chaired DRTF Working Groups covering the topics of Employment and Income, Independent Living and Health, Independent Living and Social Care, Housing, Access to Services, Access to Justice and Travel.
• The DRTF Policy lead.
• A minimum of three Welsh Government social researchers were dedicated to the co-production team throughout, including some with lived experience of being disabled.
• A Principal Researcher supported co-production throughout and had responsibility for the final evaluation.
• The Head of the Equality, Race and Disability Evidence Units had oversight from project inception and was fully involved in the co-production from the point the research focus had been agreed.

The aim of the research was to iteratively co-produce primary evidence and use it to explore the DRTF Working Group recommendation, through involving:

• the co-production team and its initial scoping discussions
• representatives of disabled people including Disabled People’s Organisations (DPOs) and Impairment Groups (IGs)
• representatives of third sector organisations providing support services to disabled people
• representatives of social care providers
• representatives of Welsh Local Authorities supporting disabled people
• academics working on research relating to disability rights
• selected Welsh Government policy officers
• representatives of trades unions

The co-production team set out to work as co-productively as possible to scope, co-design and co-plan the research, develop research tools, co-facilitate the deliberative workshop and to review and agree the findings based on the data as analysed by two Welsh Government researchers within the team. Welsh Government researchers drafted, and quality assured, the reports to GSR standards prior to offering these for review by the co-production team. 

The extent to which decisions were co-produced varied at different stages of the project. Some decisions were reserved by Welsh Government where it had responsibilities to uphold. For example statutory data protection responsibilities or professional GSR standards such as ethical responsibilities relating to confidentiality of findings prior to publication. 

Co-production is an iterative process. The co-production involved two pieces of research and decisions taken about the fieldwork design impacted on resources available to adequately deliver on other research objectives. This is explained in more detail in the Methodology section and will be further explored through the project evaluation. The evaluation will consider to what extent the research was co-produced across the different stages of the two research prototype projects.

Working together as a team of experts by experience and academic or Government social researchers (some were both) added to the quality of the research. For example:

• knowledge about the research topic was pooled and this research built upon knowledge accrued in the DRTF Working Group
• the lens of lived experience was applied to development of the research tools, co-facilitation of the workshop and interpretation of the data
• assumptions about disabled people were challenged and opportunities to do things differently were highlighted
• research and reports were co-designed in line with the Social Model of Disability
• joint efforts were made to select and recruit participants in for the workshop