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This paper aims to outline the process of developing a new co-produced virtual group support programme called Positive Family Connections (PFC) aimed at family carers of children with a learning disability, or who are autistic, aged between 8 and 13 years.

Development process: family carers were recruited to develop PFC prior to a feasibility randomised controlled trial being conducted (not reported in this paper). The programme was positively oriented and family systems-focused. PFC was developed by family carers, along with the research team, and designed to be delivered by family carer facilitators. The development process included several meetings to design the format and content of the programme. An initial pilot was then delivered and further amendments made to the programme in response to the pilot participants’ feedback.

The programme: the co-produced PFC programme involved attending six weekly sessions on Zoom; each 2-h session focused on different themes (e.g. communication and activities).

Reflections on the co-production process: key ingredients of co-production included ensuring clarity on roles, positive communication and understanding of the family carers’ situation and utilising the varied skills family carers can bring to research and practise.

This is the first family systems-focused programme that the authors know of, that has been co-produced with family carers and solely delivered virtually by trained family carer facilitators from the outset.

The purpose of this paper is to report on research with older people that explored experiences of loneliness in order to consider community level approaches to prevent and reduce feelings of loneliness.

This research was co-produced with a community research group and involved a series of in-depth interviews (n=14) with older people. Interviews were thematically analysed.

Analysis revealed three key themes: connecting and disconnecting, points of vulnerability and older identity. Social connections were important to participants and many felt disconnected at times. Findings underline the importance of understanding the social perceptions of older people and how individuals themselves conceptualise older age.

Further research is needed to explore the value of social media in reducing feelings of loneliness generally. With regards to social implication the author suggests that older people need to be more visible and loneliness needs to be normalised and discussed without stigmatisation. In practical terms as people get older, and particularly as they retire, people need opportunities to re/engage with their geographically local community. The author suggests that preventing loneliness may mean finding supportive structures to enable this such as local community-based retirement classes. It is important to note that this research concentrated on one particular community in Bristol and needs to be replicated in order to further explore findings.

This research adopted a co-produced approach and involved community professionals, academics and local older people working together to explore the issue of loneliness. The author believes this has led to a greater breadth and depth of insight.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new insights into the social impact of creative research methods.

Using the new methodology of cultural animation (CA), the authors highlight how knowledge can be co-produced between academics, community members and organisational practitioners. Drawing on the UK Connected Communities programme, the authors explore examples of immersive and performative techniques including arts and crafts, drama and poetry.

The authors showcase the practical and theoretical benefit of such exercises to generate impact and influence. Empirically, the authors demonstrate the potential of CA to bring together researchers and community members in useful partnerships that foster dialogical exchange. Theoretically, the authors extend and develop the value of American Pragmatism by highlighting how democratic, iterative and practical learning plays out through the materials, networks and processes of cultural animation.

Exploration of the examples leads us to propose and explore impact as a form of legacy which captures the temporal, processual and performative nature of knowledge sharing and co-production.

The methodology of CA is innovative and has not been tested widely to date although, as the authors illustrate, it is particularly useful for encouraging interaction between academics and the wider world by developing and nurturing interactions and relationships. It carries potential to contribute new insights to the theorisation and lived experience of organisation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of co-producing a formulation alongside a service user and the clinical team within a secure inpatient service. This paper has been co-authored by the service user and members of the multi-disciplinary team (MDT).

An open-ended focus group discussion was facilitated with the service user and members of her MDT. The process of thematic analysis was applied to the focus group transcript.

The following themes highlighted important outcomes of co-producing a formulation within a secure inpatient setting; “Meaningful Collaboration”, “Co-Produced Understanding” and a “Shift in Power Differential”. This paper demonstrates the importance of meaningful co-production within a secure inpatient service whilst also highlighting the challenges and tensions of working in a co-produced way within this context.

This paper explores the process of co-producing and developing a formulation from the perspective of one service user and their MDT within a secure inpatient setting. It would be unhelpful to extrapolate broad assumptions from this case study although this study does raise important considerations for future research and encourages an emphasis on a co-produced design and dissemination.

This case study highlights the importance of co-production in clinical endeavours, service delivery and development perspectives and in the dissemination of this information.

The importance of co-producing and co-authoring alongside service users have been highlighted in this paper. This approach to co-production and co-authorship is highly recommended in future research endeavours.

Using Lundy's model (2007), this chapter adopts a child-centred approach to discuss decision-making in relation to designing a study which aimed to amplify childhood voices of parental separation (Kay-Flowers, 2019). It examines the role of young people in designing and co-producing the research tools, specifically designed to give voice to childhood experiences of parental separation and divorce. It explains how the research findings were shared with different audiences and reflects on the effectiveness of the approaches taken.

The chapter starts by outlining the four elements of ‘space’, ‘voice’, ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ in Lundy's model (2007) before going on to identify the gap in existing research on children's experience of parental separation and divorce, explaining why their voices need to be heard.

A focus group of young people were involved in designing the study. Finding current methods unsuitable for addressing the research question, they co-produced new research tools specifically designed for the study, alongside the researcher, in a process known as bricolage. The chapter explains the processes involved in creating the bricolage and describes the newly created research tools which were an online questionnaire and Prompt Simulation Video (PSV).

The last part of the chapter explains how ‘audience’ and ‘influence’ informed decision-making about how the study's findings could be presented to amplify childhood voices of parental separation and divorce, to ensure they were heard by different audiences of academics, practitioners, parents, public and children. It concludes with consideration of the effectiveness of this approach.

This paper aims at examining the prospects and possibilities of autoethnography in trust research. The focus of this study is on trust-building in a management team from an esthetic leadership perspective. The empirical context of the study is the organization of higher education during a funding reform.

This study adopted a qualitative research strategy with co-produced autoethnographic methods. The data comprised the researcher's diary, field notes and written texts from informants. Autoethnographic methods were applied in data gathering; more precisely, the data were collected by the moving observing method of shadowing and complemented with the management team's written texts reporting their feelings. The data were analyzed by constructing autoethnographic vignettes and a critical frame story.

The findings of the study contribute to the methodological discussion of autoethnographic research when studying a complex phenomenon such as trust-building. The findings suggest that the role of authenticity in trust-building may vary depending on the esthetic leadership style. Furthermore, the findings contribute to the esthetic leadership theory by a proposal of esthetic reassurance as intentional leader-embodied communication aiming to reinforce follower trust in a leader.

Co-produced autoethnography is applied in studying trust-building. Furthermore, this paper provides an inside view of the meaning of esthetics in leader-follower relationships in higher education organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to report on how early years practitioners worked with the ORIM Framework to support work with parents to promote early literacy experiences.

Co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) was used to develop and evaluate work with parents to facilitate their young children’s literacy. Information was gathered in discussion groups, interviews with parents and practitioners and feedback from all the parties involved.

Practitioners and families engaged with each other in the further development of an established literacy programme, and families demonstrated “ownership” of the co-produced knowledge after the end of the project.

Project design in co-produced research and KE is necessarily flexible. The focus is on practitioners’ knowledge and ownership of the process, sharing knowledge with parents and enhancing children’s experiences.

Practices that can enhance parental engagement in their children’s early literacy are varied and multiple and ORIM can be used flexibly to plan, develop and evaluate innovative and community – (and family –) specific practices.

Where parents have more knowledge of children’s early literacy development they are in a better position to support them; for learning communities there are implications in terms of future development of work with families to support early literacy development.

This paper contributes an original approach to the co-production of research with early years practitioners. It also identifies specific issues around the ethics of ownership in co-produced research.

Co-production in the context of mental health research has become something of a buzzword to indicate a project where mental health service users and academics are in a research partnership. The notion of partnership where one party has the weight of academic tradition on its side is a contestable one, so in this paper the authors “write to understand” (Richardson and St Pierre, 2005) as the purpose of this paper is to examine the experiences of working in a co-produced research project that investigated supported housing services for people with serious mental health problems.

The authors set out to trouble the notion of co-produced research though a painfully honest account of the project, while at the same time recognising it as an idea whose time has come and suggesting a framework to support its implementation.

Co-production is a useful, albeit challenging, approach to research.

This paper is particularly relevant to researchers who are endeavouring to produce work that challenges the status quo through giving voice to people who are frequently silenced by the research process.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the process of co-producing mental health research where work was shared between university academics, charity-based researchers and a Lived Experience Advisory Panel.

The authors express the opinions of a research team made up of people with experience of using mental health services, being carers and being academically trained researchers from a range of health and social science disciplines. Some had experience in several areas. The paper is co-produced to provide collective reflection and recommendations.

Co-production of research is not well documented in published literature. The authors believe there is scope to develop co-production approaches, but further conceptual and theoretical work is needed alongside empirical studies. A socially situated complex research project, possibly involving multi-stakeholder groups, demands flexibility in approach. Similarly to user-controlled and other emancipatory methodologies, co-production makes the democratisation of research a primary objective in order to produce better quality and more relevant studies. Co-production also addresses inequalities in power and control within research projects; this way of working does provide a healthy challenge to traditional research hierarchies.

Lessons learned should be honestly shared to develop co-production research methods. Projects need to have a strategy for how to value different contributions and facilitate constructive relationships if discord emerges. Establishing clear project roles, expectations and process for payment are essential in developing genuine collaborative partnerships.

It is a viewpoint paper.