Innovating relationships: Taking a co-productive approach to the shaping of telecare services for older people

We reflect on the experiences of OLDES (Older People@Home), a European Commission 6th Framework-co-funded project, which sought to undertake a user-centred design of telecare services for older people. A series of interventions were undertaken with the objective of nurturing co-production. The aim was a rebalancing of the techno-centric focus of the system development and delivery partners in the project in order to address the wider needs and interests of other members and stakeholders (in particular, health, social care and the voluntary/community sector) as well as those of the older people themselves and their carers. The intention, in response to the challenges posed by an ageing demographic, was to effect wider discussions about the role of a telecare in the sustainable development of health and social care services. We use this experience to reflect on the practical struggles involved in trying to build a shared set of understandings and practices that might enable a variant of co-production to be nurtured and to evolve. We conclude by discussing the challenges of being engaged in this sort of process and the need to include spaces and occasions for the innovation of inter-organisational relationships as an essential part of the shaping of complex products and services of this type.