The co-production team works closely with Blackpool Council’s children’s social care services to ensure that children, young people, and families are meaningfully involved in shaping the support they receive.
We believe services are most effective when they are co-designed with the people who use them. By working in partnership with families and professionals, we help to build a culture of trust, inclusion, and shared decision-making across Blackpool’s social care system.
Our co-production work in children’s social care includes:
- Listening to lived experience
We create safe spaces for young people, parents, and carers to share their experiences and influence how services are developed and improved
- Advisory and peer groups
We support advisory groups where people with lived experience regularly meet with professionals to reflect on what’s working and what could change
- Training and development
We co-produce and deliver training for social care teams, helping professionals understand the value of co-production and how to apply it in practice
- Creating and sharing resources
From visual tools like Understanding Your Family’s Journey – The MAP, to the co-designed Blackpool Families Rock principles, we help make services more accessible and respectful
- Shaping practice and policy
We work with service leads and strategic partners to embed co-production into decision-making at every level — from direct work with families to wider system change
Our principles in practice
Our work is guided by the Blackpool Families Rock principles and a heart, head and hand approach — which focuses on how we behave, think, and work together.
Heart: How we behave
- We are inclusive
- We build trusted relationships
- We are respectful
- We are kind
- We encourage our families to be brave with us
- We are positive
- We are realistic
- We are honest
Head: How we think
- We work with families to assess and understand, analyse impact and outcomes and are objective. We do not judge
- We work collaboratively with others, sharing information in the right way at the right time to get the best outcomes for families
- We empathise and recognise the impact of trauma
- We believe in families
Hand: How we work
- We work restoratively, and balance families’ strengths with what we are worried about
- We help families develop tailored solutions
- We work with children and families, we do not do things to them
- We encourage our children and families to be aspirational
These values help ensure that services are:
- Compassionate
- Collaborative
- Child- and family-centred
- Empowering
If you are a parent, carer, young person, or professional interested in co-production in children’s social care, we’d love to hear from you.
Contact the co-production team at: coproduction@blackpool.gov.uk