Co-creation – A method to develop sustainable welfare solutions Erasmus Project

Project Title

Co-creation – A method to develop sustainable welfare solutions

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2016

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Inclusion – equity; Health and wellbeing

Project Summary

Context:
The “Co-creating Welfare” project is motivated by a broadly political acknowledged need for re-organisation within the welfare sector in order to obtain a more sustainability and cost effectiveness. Local authorities are currently struggling with budget cut-downs in the welfare sector, mainly due to consequenses of the hardly ended worldwide financial crisis. As a response to the need for re-organisation, co-creation has started to become an acknowledged concept to create a more sustainable set-up and organisation of the welfare sector. Introducing co-creation as a new method to develop and implement welfare solutions, will challenge old structures and all stakeholders must redefine themselves in this new collaboration concept. The traditional linear planning will be dropped in order to give more room for common identification of challenges and possible solutions through brainstorming, creativity and impulsive ideas. This calls for a new approach of preparing and training the professional practitioners working within health and social care, welfare, education and youth. In order to prepare and manage local co-creation processes, professional practitioners will need to learn how to become multidisciplinary process facilitators instead of “just” being a civil servant doing “caseworking” based on clear guidelines.
Objective:
The objective of the project is to develop, test and propose efficient ways of implementation of a common European set of training materials, which will assist professional practitioners on local level around Europe, to qualify themselves to carry out co-creation processes on local level, which can push forward the needed re-organisation and effectiveness of the public welfare sector.
Partnership:
The consortium consists of 5 partners from 4 countries; University College Lillebælt and Southdenmark European Office from Denmark, Lyon University from France, Minho University from Portugal, Coventry University from UK. Together, the partners represent a substantial pool of knowledge within co-creation pedagogies, development of training/educational courses, practical work with NGOs, citizens and volunteers and practical and process oriented collaboration and coaching of local authorities and professionals in the public sector within welfare, health and education. A pool of knowledge, which will ensure a successful and qualitative implementation of the Co-creating Welfare project.
Main activities undertaken in the project
The Co-creating Welfare project is a action research project , containing 4 main project phases; preparation, development, testing & trial out and conceptualisation.The activities in the “Co-creating Welfare” project are the following; a) development of a need analysis by involving 4 pilot sites in each participating country, b) development of a co-cration training course, which teaches the participation to kick start and carry through a co-cration process from initiation to evaluation and communication of the process and its results, c) testing of the training course material within the 4 pilot sites, wheree training is provided to professional practitioners working closely to the citizens, d) evaluating and gathering experiences among partners and participants in the training course in order to determine how to fine tune and ensure highest possible relevance for the target group and opportunities for upscaling and futher use beyond the project partnership and period.
Results and impact:
The project has produced all the intellectual outputs that was intended; IO1) Needs analysis and mapping, IO2) Co-creating Training Course Material, IO3) Co-creation Concept and IO4) Sustainability Document.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 272070,59 Eur

Project Coordinator

UCL ERHVERVSAKADEMI & PROFESSIONSHOJSKOLE SI & Country: DK

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDADE DO MINHO
• COVENTRY UNIVERSITY
• UNIVERSITE LYON 1 CLAUDE BERNARD
• FORENINGEN EU OG INTERNATIONALT SAMARBEJDE I SYDDANMARK – F.M.B.A.