Co-production of health- and welfare services between local governments and voluntary organizations in Norway and Germany

In the Copro-project we are investigating co-production of welfare-services between governmental bodies and voluntary actors within elderly care and drug-care in Norway and Germany. The main purpose is to understand and explain how traits of different welfare systems and traditions for collaboration shapes the potential for co-production of welfare between governmental bodies and voluntary actors. In the project we have first performed a systematic literature review (WP1) of international (English) research on co-production of welfare services in three countries (Norway, Germany, United Kingdom), representing three types of welfare systems. In a submitted article for review in an international journal, we have investigated the status on research on collective co-production of welfare in the different welfare systems, to what degree this research investigates how historical and institutional factors shape welfare services and relations between the public sector and the voluntary sector. A secondary purpose of the article is to also connect the field of third-sector research with the field of co-production research. In the second work package (WP2) we have conducted a survey among 500+ voluntary organizations registered in the Voluntary Register under the business-area Q: Health- and social services. In the survey, the organizations were asked questions regarding the traits and characteristics of their relations and collaborations with Norwegian municipalities. In an article published in Norwegian journal of welfare research, I examines the extent to which voluntary healthcare organizations have relationships with municipalities related to service production and political interest representation, the extent to which relationships are formalized and institutionalized, and who has the power to define and manage the relationships. The analyses show that the organizations' relations with municipalities is to a certain extent concerned with formal political interest representation and also concerned with cooperation on municipal service production, but they are dominated by less institutionalized cooperation on single issues. Here lies a potential for better utilization of the voluntary actor's distinctive contributions in the development and production of welfare. Improving the basic framework conditions for voluntary organizations within healthcare may help achieve this. In the third work package (WP3), we have collected data among voluntary and municipal actors (qualitative intervieews) in four municipalities in Norway, as well as of media coverage and public documents related to public-voluntary collaboration. Here, we have gathered information on the traits of municipal-voluntary collaboration within elderly care and drug care, on the challenges of such collaboration, and factors that promote and limit collaboration. Here, we will gain insight and knowledge on how collaboration is done in practice and how collaboration is discussed in local discourses and in public documents. Based on the collected data, we will develop four journal articles. Two have been submitted for review in journals. Two are in development. In order to compare the case-study in work package three, in the fourth work package (WP4) we have performed a similar, but down-sized version of the case-study in Germany, representing a contrasting welfare system to the Norwegian case. Here, we have conducted interviews among municipal and voluntary actors within health and drug care in two cities. From this study, a comparative paper focusing on voluntary-public collaboration within healthcare in Berlin and Oslo. In the last work package in the project (WP5), we will tie together the knowledge from the previous work packages (WP1-WP4) and identify the central societal characteristics that shape the future potential for developing municipal-voluntary collaboration within welfare service production. As a whole, the CoPro-project will develop and disseminate theoretical, empirical and politically relevant knowledge on the implications, potentials and barriers for the inclusion of voluntary actors in the production of welfare through co-production.

The object of this project is co-production between governmental bodies and voluntary organizations within elderly care and drug care. The project will clarify the scope of such co-production; variations in co-production practices and policy discourses; implications for the involved actors including the end users of services; and finally what the potentials and limitations are for the further development of governmental-voluntary collaboration in welfare service production. Such clarifications are much needed due to an increased policy attention and resource allocation towards co-production following increased pressure on welfare systems, while at the same time the empirical knowledge on the scope, characteristics and consequences of co-production is inadequate, and theoretical understanding of the implications of institutional context for co-production is lacking. The project will start with an analysis of existing literature and combine perspectives from institutional theory and existing co-production research to develop a conceptual and theoretical foundation for the project. With a main focus on Norway, we will approach the research questions empirically on both the practice- and the discourse-level by analyzing quantitative and qualitative data from local government actors, voluntary actors, and service users (register data, survey data, personal interviews, policy documents and media content). To contrast and validate the findings in Norway, and to improve the theoretical understanding of the implications of institutional context for co-production, we will compare them with a similar study in Germany. Finally, we will synthesize the insights from the theoretical and empirical investigations and perform general analyses identifying the framing conditions for different types of co-production between governmental bodies and voluntary organizations.