How can coproduction help to deliver culturally responsive disability support? A case study from Australia

How to improve access and quality of social services to respond to cultural diversity is receiving increased attention. Yet no approach to cultural responsiveness has been widely accepted. Coproduction has been championed in many service fields for better service outcomes and has the potential to inform practices for cultural responsiveness. This study explored how coproduction can be used to deliver culturally responsive social services. We conducted a qualitative case study and examined how an Australian disability service organisation operated a programme to improve cultural responsiveness with Australian Chinese people with disability and their families. The findings suggested that coproduction enabled the organisation to identify that the people with disability and their families considered services were culturally responsive when the staff were competent and committed to person-centred services. The coproduction contributed to continuous improvement of the services and revealed the qualities that were valued by the Australian Chinese service users. This study enriches the knowledge on coproduction by demonstrating the influence of the process of coproduction on outcomes for service users and providers. The study also contributes to the knowledge on cultural responsiveness by highlighting the elements of culturally responsive services valued by the service users. Coproduction could be more widely used for service development given its capacity to identify and respond to service needs. Practical implications for culturally responsive social services are that workforce training could focus on the principles of person-centred services and skills for working effectively with people from culturally diverse backgrounds.