Authors: Francesca Castle & Molly Galea
Year: 2023
Event: 2023 The MHS conference - Adelaide
Subject: Facing our Faux-design: Reflections on implementing co-design
Type of resource: Conference Presentations and Papers
Abstract: This conference abstract discusses the implementation of a codesign approach to service design within one of Mercy Mental Health's services, the Residential Rehabilitation Services. The authors reflect on their first attempt and discuss the successes, triumphs, failures, and obstacles encountered during the process.
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System has called for codesign or coproduction in almost a third of its 65 recommendations, highlighting the expectation that people with lived experience and their supporters are central to the planning and delivery of mental health services.
The Victorian Government states that “Co-design brings citizens and stakeholders together to design new products, services and policies” . Codesign is a tool for challenging inequitable power structures and bringing humanity and human rights into mental health. Enabling a codesign approach is a daunting and complex task. It demands skilled facilitators, an engaged and optimistic consumer and supporter network, practitioners willing to contemplate alternatives and champion the process, and organisational capacity to respond.
With this honest analysis of an organisation's initial efforts at codesign, the authors invite the audience to reflect on their own attempts to implement codesign and to reshape the relationship between clinical mental health services, consumers, and supporters.
Learning Objective
• Reflect on the barriers and enablers of codesign, understand the influence of these in a clinical setting; and use “positive failure” to promote change.
• Highlight the potential benefits of a codesign approach in mental health services and the challenges that come with its implementation.
References
Katterl, S: Co-design or Faux Design? A chat with Jo Szczepanska. Retrieved 17/3/23 from https://www.simonkatterlconsulting.com/writing/co-design-or-faux-design-a-chat-with-jo-szczepanska
McKercher, KA (2020): Beyond Sticky Notes: Doing Co-Design for Real, Thorpe-Bowker Identifier Services Australia,
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