This paper examines the nature of the co-production that happened between a university and a children’s charity/non-governmental organisation in a research project, VOICES, during the pandemic that aimed to find out about children’s needs and experiences and encourage organisations such as schools to take appropriate action in response. For people who are not part of a University, Universities wherever they are in Europe are difficult organisations to engage with (Steer et al 2021). It is not easy for two organisations to work collaboratively that are so different in size, culture and the nature of their work. And yet this is what happened in this research project. The project was carried out in an 18-month period during the pandemic to hear the voices of economically disadvantaged young people about their experiences of the pandemic and about their needs. The aim of the project was that a range of stakeholders in the UK would hear what children and young people had to say and that this would lead to changes in practice and policy (Clark and Laing 2018). The areas that children and young people spoke about included learning at home and at school, home, relationships, mental health, physical health, digital worlds, hobbies and activities, and their futures.

VOICES is a research project co-produced by workers from the charity Children North East and education researchers from Newcastle University funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. More than 1500 children and young people aged 5yrs -18yrs took part in focus groups (online or in person) or sent in their drawings and writing about what was important to them in the pandemic and what was difficult. The project team together with young people from some of the schools spoke directly with specific stakeholders to try to bring about some targeted change in the services accessed by young people. The areas in which this happened was education, employment, digital learning, transport and health.

This paper recognises the often un-critical use of the term co-production and aims to take a critical and reflective approach (Clark et al 2017). This research was developed from the start involving researchers from two very different organisations. The whole project team met at least weekly from the time the idea of it emerged, through the design of the methodology and the writing of the proposal and throughout project delivery. To experienced researchers, this project felt unusual and relatively unique: we were all learning all the time. This paper explores what kind of co-production took place, what co-production meant for the different people in the team and discusses what went well and the challenges that emerged. The research does not claim to be co-produced with young people but the team aimed to involve young people in the impact stage of the research. We engaged with children and young people through organisations such as schools and youth clubs and whilst we had important relationships with these organisations we did not aim for them to be co-production partners. This paper therefore also looks at what kind of partnerships took place between the research team and young people and between the research team and the organisations we worked with (Edwards 2010).

In many countries across Europe and wider, Universities are in partnership with non-governmental organisations in order to carry out research that aims to address social challenges (Goddard 2019). These are emerging and challenging relationships that can also be extremely beneficial in terms of both process and outcomes. This paper is therefore highly relevant to contexts in different European countries.

VOICES was coproduced from the start by researchers and practitioners from two organisations, Newcastle University and Children North East, working together. This built on relationships between individuals that had been developed over a number of years working together such as on the evaluation of Children North East’s poverty proofing audit process and on a European networking programme ACCOMMPLISSH. VOICES team worked together across the two organisations, made connections, established conversations, gathered and analysed evidence, and used both our evidence and connections to make multiple impacts on organisational policy. The project engaged with 1500+ children and young people from 68 different organisations that included schools and youth organisations across all local authorities in the North East of the UK. The methodology of the co-production is briefly described rather than the focus group ad drawing and writing methods used with young people. Co-production of this research entailed a range of roles being carried out differently between the two organisations. The project was run by a team leader from each organisation, managed by a researcher from Newcastle University, focus groups delivered by sessional workers from Children North East, and policy and practice impact managed by a Newcastle University research. There was a rotating chair at our weekly meetings. The need to have similar high quality data from each focus group meant the need for many conversations between the whole team. Almost all meetings happened on zoom – and the whole team did not meet in person until the project had been operating for almost a year. The whole team of VOICES researchers from both Newcastle University and Children North East were involved in carrying out the analysis. Summaries of each focus group notes were produced separately by each of the fieldwork researchers from Children North East who carried out the focus group, and by a university researcher who was not involved in delivery of the groups. These summaries were developed further through discussion with the full research team, to reflect on the focus groups and identify the headline themes and sub-themes that we present as our findings. One of the university researchers also carried out a full thematic analysis of all the findings to check themes and the way they were being summarised and exemplified with quotes. This was a narrative approach that sought to both present the detail of children and young people’s experiences, and to present connections between issues.

This research centred on the voice of young people using a co-production methodology between researchers in two different organisations. Our findings in terms of what children said, drew or wrote and actions taken with stakeholders were varied and will be reported briefly when we deliver this paper. However, this paper is not centred on such findings but is about the nature of the co-production that took place. Several times throughout the research team members consulted with each other to reflect on how we were working to deliver the project. There were several things that contributed to a high level of co-production that was experienced. This included the trust and mutual respect that existed between the two team leaders, that was built up within the whole team, the nature of the weekly meetings and what this contributed in terms of the practice of co-production. The team built on many other pre-existing relationships in order to seek schools and youth clubs to engage with the project. The pace of the collaborative work within the team was unusual for us all and was perhaps mostly explained by the circumstances of the pandemic and the urgency that this gave us. There were a number of problems during the project which were discussed within the separate teams, between the team leaders and sometimes by the whole team. These will be discussed in more detail when the paper is delivered. They included the need for breaks on activity due to finite resources, communication issues, and concerns about recruitment. What was most interesting were conversations that in the whole team about the learning from working together and what this brought us all personally. Findings will be discussed through a socio-cultural theoretical frame focusing on ideas about relational agency (Edwards, 2010; Forbes et al 2019).

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