ABSTRACT
Co-production as a concept has had a short but complex history. It began in 1977 in the United States by Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues, who discovered the term as they investigated why crime rates were increasing in Chicago despite the allocation of a police vehicle to the local department to support law enforcement in the area. Since then, co-production has experienced a slump followed by a rise in interest by scholars and practitioners alike in several different disciplines including healthcare. Today, co-production is as popular as ever. It is used in many jurisdictions including the United Kingdom and Ireland as a mechanism of implementing personal recovery in mental health service provision. However, it is now at a critical juncture where scholars must decide what path co-production takes next in order to avoid the misunderstandings that are currently present for the term in the settings it is utilised in.
