From consultation to co-production – a beginner’s guide

Summary

In this blog, Aurora Todisco, hub Topic leader for Patient Engagement, shares her advice (and a handy ‘mini-guide’) to help people make the shift from consultation to co-production. 

Content

Moving beyond asking for views

Consultation is often the default approach to involvement: organisations ask for feedback, gather opinions, and then make decisions internally. While consultation has value, it is not the same as co‑production.

The attached mini‑guide, From Consultation to Co‑Production: A Beginner’s Guide, is designed to help teams understand the difference – and take realistic steps towards shared decision‑making.

Mini guide - From_Consultation_to_Co-Production_A_Beginners_Guide.docx

Understanding the spectrum

Involvement exists on a spectrum, from one‑off consultations through to full co‑production. Co‑production means working with people with lived experience as partners, not simply as contributors.

This blog and the attached mini-guide, breaks the concept down into manageable steps, recognising that co‑production doesn’t happen overnight.

Starting small and building trust

One of the biggest barriers to co‑production is the belief that you have to do everything at once. In reality, co‑production often starts with:

• Small joint projects
• Clear, shared goals
• Honest conversations about roles and constraints

By starting small, teams can build confidence, trust and shared ways of working over time.

What good co‑production looks like

The mini-guide focuses on a few core principles:

• Sharing decision‑making power
• Being transparent about what can and can’t change
• Documenting decisions and learning
• Investing in relationships through regular communication

These practices help move involvement from a transactional activity to a collaborative partnership.

Why this guide now?

Many organisations talk about co‑production, but fewer feel confident putting it into practice. This beginner’s guide offers a realistic, supportive entry point – helping teams move forward without feeling overwhelmed.

About the author

Aurora Todisco is a Finance, HR, and Governance Development Lead with over 21 years of experience, including the past 9 years dedicated to the health and social care sector. She brings a unique blend of strategic expertise and lived experience to her work, with a strong focus on improving patient safety, health equity and quality of care. Aurora holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Advanced Primary Care Management, which informs her systems-level approach to healthcare leadership. Since 2021, she has co-produced initiatives with nearly 90 national stakeholders, driving forward accessibility inclusion, and trauma-informed practice across NHS, academic and research settings. Actively involved in quality improvement programmes, accreditation panels and advisory groups, Aurora is passionate about amplifying patient and public voices to shape meaningful, system-wide change. Her work champions the power of real patient stories in creating campaigns that lead to safer, more equitable care for all.