Co-production when we can’t meet face-to-face: updated resources

In response to COVID-19 everyone has been working out how to stay in touch and work together, without meeting face-to-face. Researchers want to continue involving the public in research, and everyone needs to learn new ways of doing this that don’t involve face-to-face meetings.

Since the ARC West co-producing research resources launched in February, the world has completely changed. The updated resources now reflect these profound changes, with advice on a range of issues around managing public involvement remotely:

• We have added some questions about online and remote working to our reflective questions. These are designed to help everyone think about how they can work with people more equally through a process of co-produced research.
• We’ve created some new pages in our map of resources to help public involvement happen remotely. Lots of people have been developing some useful tools to guide researchers, health and social care staff, and public contributors through the different software platforms that help people connect. The new pages are from p.13-18, and include:
  • instructions to support public contributors to use online meeting platforms
  • ways to enable public involvement online
  • costs of online and telephone meetings, and how to ensure that public contributors don’t end up paying for calls
  • tips on using social media
  • advice on support and safety
  • support for working with children and young people online.

We hope these resources help everyone to think through what’s needed to keep on co-producing in practice.

If you’re aware of other resources and links that we’ve not included in these new pages, please let us know and we can add these in.

We’re also going to be running some online training in the next few months, so watch this space for further details.