What makes a good self-advocacy project? The added value of co-production

Abstract

This article describes how two self-advocates worked with two academics and others to produce a toolkit to help self-advocacy groups run better projects. We begin by explaining why this research needed doing and how we carried out the research. We then talk about what co-produced research means to us and how we think it is different from participatory or inclusive research. We discuss whether the research and this article were co-produced. We finish by looking at why we think co-production added value to this research. Our aim with this article is to help activists and academics work together to achieve two things: good-quality research findings; and big differences to disabled people’s lives.

Keywords:

• co-production
• intellectual disability
• inclusive research
• participatory research
• organisational research
• self-advocacy
• People First

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Big Lottery Fund, through the DRILL programme. They would like to thank Joe Powell, staff at All Wales People First and the other members of the Reference Group. The authors would like to acknowledge the generosity of the Open University in Wales in providing meeting space free of charge.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.