The Co-production Kickstarter

In order to engage in research that meets the needs of communities, government agencies strongly recommend people with lived experience participate in all stages of the research process. While this might seem an obvious recommendation, researchers are often provided with very little guidance around what constitutes the differing levels of participation.

Research participation sits on a broad continuum, from exclusion of people with lived experience; through to a subject position where people with lived experience are recruited as subjects or participants; to tokenism where people with lived experience are consulted but have little influence over the research strategy or process; and then there is high-level participation, where researchers work in partnership with people with lived experience.

Internationally, co-production research is considered the “gold standard” of high-level participation, and moving forward will likely become the “new normal” in research-informed services and policy.

In response to this movement, the Co-production Kickstarter (opens external site) was created as a resource to support meaningful co-production research in the mental health, alcohol and other drugs (AOD) sector. Its approach is in line with the original conception of co-production, and consumer advocacy efforts seeking a substantive approach to research participation.

Designers of the Co-production Kickstarter hope it will promote high-level research participation for people with lived experience of mental distress and AOD. The Co-production Kickstarter provides researchers with a clear and accessible resource to get started, or become more familiar with co-production principles and practices.

The Co-production Kickstarter was co-produced in partnership with conventional researchers, people with lived experience, and the Community Mental Health Drug and Alcohol Research Network (CMHDARN) (opens external site), which is a collaborative project between the Network of Alcohol and Other Drugs Agencies (NADA), the Mental Health Coordinating Council (MHCC) and the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

Dr Jo River from the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Faculty of Health at UTS, co-led the design and content of the guide. They say, “Participation of people with lived experience is not only fundamental to improving services, policy, and health outcomes, it is also associated with improving the relevance of research priorities and outcomes, and raising the quality of research interpretation and translation.”

Other UTS researchers involved in the project include Mr Bradley Foxlewin, a lived experience researcher and educator, and the former inaugural Deputy Mental Health Commission of NSW, Mr Brett Bellingham, a lived experience researcher and educator teaching into the School of Nursing and Midwifery mental health program, and Dr Grenville Rose a Senior Researcher at Being and Flourish Australia.

Check out the Co-production Kickstarter guide (opens external site)

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