Varieties of co-production in public services: time banks in a UK health policy context

Time banking is a third-sector initiative that enacts principles of co-production and offers a model with which to understand how users can become actively involved with professionals and other stakeholders in the delivery of public services. This article explores possible lines of tension between principles that underpin time banking practices and principles informing the health policy field in the United Kingdom. We develop a framework rooted in the logics approach to critical policy analysis with which to track shifts in conceptions of co-production at three nodes situated along the full length of the public service chain: (1) service provision and distribution; (2) service delivery; and (3) service governance. Our analysis reveals discrepancies in the way co-production principles can be defined, interpreted, and linked to broader notions of social justice: recognition-based interpretations with a transformative accent, and choice-based interpretations with an additive accent. We conclude that the health care regime, if understood as a 'regime of choice', will invariably prove to be a rather inhospitable environment for time banks, whose co-production principles are much more in tune with what we call a 'regime of recognition'. © 2012 Copyright 2012 Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham.