Public services are increasingly mandated, by law, to engage with the most vulnerable in our society. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, for example, provides an opportunity for communities to have more influence... [ view full abstract ]
Public services are increasingly mandated, by law, to engage with the most vulnerable in our society. The Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, for example, provides an opportunity for communities to have more influence over the way public services are planned and provided and aims to address inequalities. What remains uncharted in public management theory and practice, however, is an exploration of the extent to which engaging with disadvantaged groups through bottom-up, co-produced initiatives may be fundamentally ‘risky’ to community members, public service organisations (PSOs) and other stakeholders.
This paper will enrich our theoretical understanding of the governance of risk with vulnerable user engagement in public services delivery through an empirical case study. Using participatory action research (PAR), a valuable methodology for bridging theory and practice though underutilised in the management literature, this research inquires:
i) How risky is co-production with vulnerable communities in the design and delivery of public services?
ii) What are the potential benefits of ‘risky co-production’ with vulnerable communities in the design and delivery of public services?
PAR was conducted in three Scottish neighbourhoods of low socioeconomic status to co-produce a campaign to tackle illicit tobacco use with the National Health Service and other partners. Smokers from these neighbourhoods are negatively affected by illicit tobacco (counterfeit or smuggled cigarettes), but sustain their habit and increase consumption due to low cost and easy availability of the product. This makes it easier for community members and youth to gain access to illicit tobacco and leads to widening health inequalities.
‘Pop-up radio labs’ themed to explore the use of illicit tobacco were held with community members who shared views and local knowledge of the topic while learning how to make radio programmes. Two additional PAR workshops were conducted with representatives from the health board, Trading Standards, Community Health Partnership and community members to further explore processes involved in co-producing a multi-agency campaign to tackle illicit tobacco use. Phase three brought together third sector organisations, Trading Standards, HM Revenue & Customs, health practitioners and police in an attempt to design and deliver a campaign to tackle the issue. This led to a co-produced illicit tobacco toolkit to capture the complexity of issues related to illicit tobacco (eg. criminality) with resource packs, infographics, visual prompts and podcasts. It explains how different partners can engage communities in illicit tobacco conversations.
This approach proved to be risky for PSOs and community members raising issues of ethics, confidentiality, safety, limited capacity and resources, and tokenism in community engagement. Co-production within the climate of budget cuts, fixed-term contracts and the health and social care integration agenda is challenging.
It also provided an opportunity for the disadvantaged to raise concerns about welfare reform and financial inclusion agenda, and PSOs to reflect honestly on barriers to co-production in public management. Evidently, efforts to tackle inequalities need to move away from a narrow focus on siloed outcomes and find novel ways of capturing and measuring emergent outcomes that account for humanistic attributes such as social isolation and compassion.
