The term ‘co-production’ is increasingly being applied to new types of public service delivery in the UK, including new approaches to adult social care. It refers to active input by the people who use services, as well as – or instead of – those who have traditionally provided them. So it contrasts with approaches that treat people as passive recipients of services designed and delivered by someone else. It emphasises that the people who use services have assets which can help to improve those services, rather than simply needs which must be met. These assets are not usually financial, but rather are the skills, expertise and mutual support that service users can contribute to effective public services. In the words of Cummins and Miller, coproduction is about how services ‘work with rather than do unto users’.6

Co-production: an emerging evidence base for adult social care transformation

The social world is complex and emergent. Inquiry, directed towards establishing universal empirical regularities (i.e. nomothetic inquiry), cannot establish causality in such a world. We can never assign a causal effect to any intervention without assessing the whole context of that intervention. However, we can develop generalizable knowledge if we adopt research approaches that recognize both the implications of assigning causal powers to context (the essence of the realist take on evaluation) and the significance of human agency in relation to ‘the social type of causal nexus’. There are literatures that can contribute to developing such knowledge. These include macro-political science’s concern with the importance of temporal ordering in relation to outcomes; Ragin’s set theoretic understanding of causal relations and his development of systematic comparison as a basis for explicating those relations through Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA); and the presentation of causal narratives as foundati...

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Evaluating complex social interventions in a complex world.

This article draws on two recent traditions in evaluation methodology, one grounded in complexity theory and the other in a realist philosophy of science. Sometimes seen as incompatible, it is argued here that complexity theory and realist evaluation are ‘natural bedfellows’. Because of their similarities and differences, evaluators can usefully draw on both perspectives within the same evaluation. One way to do so is to draw on key concepts from each in the selection and use of substantive theory. The article introduces the concept of ‘complexity-consistent’ substantive theories and suggests that this is useful for the evaluation of policies and programs in complex adaptive systems. It demonstrates how substantive theories can be analysed in complexity terms, how multiple theories can be ‘layered’ to reflect multiple levels of systems, and how such theories can be used within evaluation design and analysis.

Using complexity-consistent theory for evaluating complex systems:

Tens of thousands of Western ‘teachers’, many of whom would not be considered teachers elsewhere, are employed to teach English in public and private education in China. Little has previously been known, except anecdotally, about their experiences, about the effect they have on education in the context, or on students’ perceptions of ‘the West’ that result from this contact. This book is an ethnographic study of Westerners’ lived experiences teaching English in Shanghai, China. It is based on three years of groundbreaking research into the pre-service training, classroom practices, personal identities and motives, and local socially constructed roles of a group of ‘backpacker teachers’ from the UK, the USA and Canada. It is a study that goes beyond the classroom, addressing broader questions about the sociology, and politics, of transnational education and China’s evolving relationship with the outside world.

A Critical Ethnography of ‘Westerners’ Teaching English in China: Shanghaied in Shanghai

Evidence-making interventions in health: A conceptual framing.

This article argues that complexity theory has the potential to bring important insights in reframing of the role and practice of evaluation but that the utility of complexity theory needs to be developed to support its application in evaluation research.This article focuses on the implications of a reformed relationship between theory and the empirical setting for what we can learn in evaluating policy. It suggests that while complexity theory provides a new way of looking at causal relationships and how we should approach them, we need to develop complexity-consistent approaches to understanding the interplay of agency and structure at the local level, the level at which explanation is deemed possible in complexity theory. It is proposed that the theory of negotiated order offers a basis to fill that gap in evaluation practice and to provide promise for theory-informed policy.

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Evaluation and Negotiated Order Developing the Application of Complexity Theory

The article focuses on the intersection of theory methodology and empirical research to argue that we can learn about habitus through certain types of focus groups. An account of the relationship between structure, individual and collective agency is developed to provide a grounding for the methodological argument. The article suggests, on the basis of this understanding, that focus groups can be constituted to give us access to interactions which draw upon the collective basis of habitus. Some empirical work is drawn upon for illustrative purposes.

Accessing Habitus: Relating Structure and Agency through Focus Group Research:

There has been considerable debate 
about the relative significance of class and gender as factors structuring women's 
lives. This article reports focus group research which reflects upon that relationship. It 
argues that we must also understand the significance of place if we are to make sense 
of the ways in which women's domestic and working lives are shaped and their action 
in response to structural change.
The research is situated in an old industrial city which has experienced very 
fundamental processes of restructuring. Changes in the nature of work, the move from 
full to part time, from permanent, skilled manual to casual semi and unskilled work 
has been reflected in the gendered restructuring of the workforce and a considerable 
rise in male unemployment.
The article reports focus group work with women at mother and toddler groups. These 
groups were important as a way of gaining access to women who were at a particular 
point in the lifestage when the dominant concerns might be expected to be domestic 
ones. Mother and toddler groups are also locality based allowing the significance of 
place in people's discussions to be understood.
The groups discussed experiences of work and domestic relations which expressed 
identifications and differences based in class, gender and place. While the effects of 
restructuring were universally recognised as bringing change, women identified 
differences in the nature and pace of change based on the interaction of structural 
forces.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.5153/sro.142

The Interaction of Gender, Class and Place in Women's Experience: A Discussion Based in Focus Group Research

The Labour government's stated commitment to shifting the balance of power to communities, citizens and users has been expressed in numerous initiatives to promote participatory governance in the local state In this context achieving reliable ways of learning about participants' views becomes critical A prime concern then becomes what constitutes `community knowledge' and how that knowledge can be developed This article considers some issues that arise for communities and policy makers in reshaping local services through community involvement in governance It draws out some implications of theoretical understandings of community, social capital and participation for the practice of community involvement and raises questions about the nature, and the potential, of community knowledge to exercise influence

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Can the community construct knowledge to shape services in the local state ? a case study.

Hartlepool's connected care pilot is a partnership between residents, councillors, Turning Point, the NHS and the local council in one of the most deprived wards in England. A local audit was conducted by residents, demonstrating the relevance of information held by the community about its needs, ambitions and interactions with services. A new service model aims to provide integrated responses to complex need, commissioned through a local partnership agreement and delivered through a social enterprise. The implementation will demonstrate how far real power is shifting to local people.

Gill Callaghan

Papers

Evaluation and Negotiated Order Developing the Application of Complexity Theory

Accessing Habitus: Relating Structure and Agency through Focus Group Research:

The Interaction of Gender, Class and Place in Women's Experience: A Discussion Based in Focus Group Research

Can the community construct knowledge to shape services in the local state ? a case study.

Connected Care in Hartlepool: From Origins Towards Reality?