Aberdeen Foyer shared their co-production story of the recruitment process they undertook for a post within their Impact Project.

Aberdeen Foyer’s Impact Project is an award-winning service offering support for adults living with long term mental health issues. The project is designed to reach out and bring individuals into a happy, inspirational environment, encouraging them to find their own strengths, build confidence and find time to flourish in order to move from a state of dependence and isolation to one of effective self management of their condition. The programme helps to reduce feelings of isolation and builds confidence to achieve goals based upon an individual’s identified capabilities, skills and aspirations.

The Impact Project is co-production in its truest sense—and its recent recruitment process for a Development coach was no exception.

The process began by facilitating a consultation meeting with Impact group members to really think about the qualities they believed were important for a development coach—and this meant reflecting and discussing the core values of Impact. This was a great exercise as it really reinforced for group members just how much ownership they have of the project and of their own recovery.

Next, the group took the lead in coming up with the wording and general tone of a job advertisement; and after selecting four candidates who best met the group’s brief they held a recruitment day. Group members were responsible for “meeting and greeting” candidates and putting them at ease. They facilitated an afternoon of activities which enabled them to get to know the candidates. For the actual interview, questions were formulated and agreed by all group members and one group member sat on the formal interview panel. Each group member voted for their favoured candidates and the final decision was unanimous – a truly co-produced recruitment process.

Feedback from group members included:

 “I enjoyed meeting the candidates, sharing lunch and getting to know them” MC

 “It was a good experience.  My views were taken into consideration” MB

“I was nervous, but it was fun.  I think it’s a really good way to hold interviews” KG

A great example of co-production in practice.

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