This webinar explored how co-production can make digital care more inclusive, practical and trusted. Speakers shared examples from lived experience, care homes and frontline care work, showing that digital transformation should happen with people, not to them.
View a recording, and scroll down to find slides, transcript, summary and useful links.
Part of Digital Care in Focus: Coproduction, July 2026.
Webinar summary
Co-production means involving people from the start, sharing power and acting on what they say. Across the webinar, speakers showed how people drawing on care and support, families, care workers, managers and communities all bring vital expertise to digital change.
Examples included personal alarms, accessible community information, resident-led food forums, digital audits, care planning apps and care worker advisory boards. The strongest message was that successful digital change starts with relationships, trust and a willingness to adapt.
The webinar showed that co-production is practical and achievable. When people are properly involved, digital care can become more inclusive, trusted and human.
Speaker: Dan Lacey, Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
SCIE have recently presented a week dedicated to co-production. Dan reflected on learnings from this week, linking the theme of the week, ‘care equity: is care fair?’, to digital care.
Top 5 takeaways:
- Technology can support care equity, but only when people help shape it from the start.
- Relationships come before systems. Trust in organisations is essential if people are going to trust new digital approaches.
- Lived experience is expertise and should have real influence in decision-making.
- There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Fairness often means offering different kinds of support so everyone can take part.
- Small changes matter. Asking better questions, making meetings accessible and acting on feedback can lead to meaningful impact.
Speaker: Paula Sardinha, NCAG (in Q&A with Dan)
Paula shared thoughts about fair involvement in practice, including work with a local co-production group to create accessible information in print, online, easy read, braille and audio formats.
She also described a family experience where technology was introduced after a hospital discharge without proper discussion, showing how well-intentioned tools can fail when they are not shaped around the person using them.
Top 5 takeaways:
- People want to have a say in their own care because each person’s needs, preferences and circumstances are different.
- Accessible information should be available in different formats and shared in the places people already use.
- Technology should never be forced on someone without explanation, discussion and consent.
- Designing for people means understanding practical details, such as hearing, language, mobility, confidence and family support.
- True co-production starts with a blank piece of paper, listens properly and follows the principle: “nothing about us without us”
Speaker: Caroline Waugh, NCAG (in Q&A with Dan)
Caroline shared how a personal alarm helped her feel safer after a serious fall because it suited her needs and preferences. Her story showed the importance of choice, flexibility and accessible support.
Top 5 takeaways:
- Technology is more likely to be used when people can choose tools that fit their identity, preferences and everyday life.
- Direct payments and flexible support can give people more control over the technology they use.
- Accessibility is personal. Information may need to be audible, visual, simple or supported by another person.
- People should be trusted to know what works for them and what they are comfortable using.
- A holistic approach matters. Digital support should fit around the whole person, their existing support and their goals.
Jo-Anne Wilson, Registered Manager, Royal British Legion
Jo-Anne Wilson, registered manager of Galanos House, shared how residents, staff, families, volunteers and the wider community work together to shape care home life. Digital systems are a part of everyday practice in a culture where all people have real influence.
Top 5 takeaways:
- Co-production in a care home starts by seeing residents as people with skills, knowledge, histories and ideas.
- Residents should have the loudest voice on issues that affect their daily lives, such as food, activities and the care environment.
- Digital tools can make feedback more accessible, for example by using larger text, graphics, smiley faces and simple buttons.
- Co-production can produce useful evidence for regulators and commissioners, while also improving people’s everyday experience.
- Organisations need to be brave, give co-production proper time and involve the whole team, not just managers.
Speaker: Olivia Firth, Care Worker’s Charity
Olivia explained why care workers must be involved in digital transformation. Through The Care Workers’ Charity’s advisory board and Champions Project, care workers have contributed frontline insight to policy, research and media work. Olivia stressed the need for safe routes to speak up, feedback loops and payment for people’s time.
Top 5 takeaways:
- Care workers are daily experts in how digital systems work in practice and where they create risks or workarounds.
- Involving care workers early can make digital tools safer, quicker to use and more trusted.
- Co-production should be ongoing, not a one-off consultation exercise.
- Employers and sector bodies must create safe, accessible ways for care workers to speak honestly, including anonymous routes where needed.
- Care workers should be paid for their time and expertise when they are asked to contribute to co-production.
Speaker: Amanda Jayne, care worker – Care Workers’ Charity
Amanda Jayne shared the benefits and frustrations of digital tools in frontline care. Apps can reduce duplication and improve access to information, but poorly designed systems can add pressure and take time away from people.
Top 5 takeaways:
- Digital tools should support care workers to spend more time with people, not pull attention away from them.
- Good systems can reduce paperwork, improve recording and give staff quick access to important information.
- Poorly designed or over-complicated systems can add pressure, waste time and create frustration.
- Frontline workers need proper training, time and confidence to use new systems safely.
- Care workers must be involved before systems are chosen and organisations should be willing to change course if a tool is not working.
Useful links
- Mental Health UK published “Principles for the Responsible Use of Technology in Mental Health and Wellbeing,” developed with input from people with lived experience [Mental Health UK with polling showing 37% of UK adults have already used a chatbot for mental health or wellbeing support, including 15% of those aged 55+
- The APA published a health advisory on GenAI chatbots and mental health, flagging that the sycophantic, always-available design of these tools can create a dangerous feedback loop for vulnerable users, and that people often don’t understand the nature of the AI relationship, which can lead them to over-disclose. It specifically warns that for people prone to disordered thinking, a chatbot’s personalised, agreeable responses can destabilise beliefs or reinforce delusional thinking which is relevant for people with psychosis-spectrum conditions.
- The BMJ carried a piece warning we may be seeing a generation forming emotional bonds with entities that lack real capacity for empathy or relational attunement and suggesting clinicians treat problematic chatbot use as a risk factor worth asking about directly.
- Harvard Business School’s AI Institute piece on dementia specifically, warning that chatbots’ sycophancy can reinforce hallucinations and delusional thinking in dementia patients, and that some are designed with engagement-maximising features that discourage users from logging off, with the risk of reducing real-world interaction and undermining the social networks known to help delay dementia progression.
- A recent narrative review proposes distinguishing “supportive pathways” (chatbot as a transitional bridge back to human contact) from “risk pathways” (social displacement, dependency, avoidance coping, and affirmation-biased feedback loops — a useful framework for staff training.
- 6th Tech’s summary indicates that a companion app can be helpful for a short duration, but if you monitor your behaviour and find you are giving less attention to real-world relationships, the tool has become more harmful than helpful.
- Centring Care Workers: A Guide from Care Workers’ Charity, a practical resource for employers, local authorities, technology and other sector suppliers, and policymakers. The charity is clear that care workers are too often informed about decisions, or consulted only after the fact, when they should be co-producing the policies, systems and tools that shape their work from the outset.
