Scaling out while staying local: Maintaining inclusive co-production with vulnerable citizens

Organisations that involve vulnerable people in co-production face a paradox: while increasing the number of participants is seen as necessary to create greater social benefit, scaling risks undermining the locally rooted, relational practices that enable vulnerable people to participate. This paper develops a conceptual model that addresses this tension, by integrating insights from scaling of social innovation, collective action and group size, and scaffolding theory from the learning sciences. The model proposes representative co-producers and peer mentors as contingent, temporary scaffolding functions that support vulnerable people's involvement in co-production. At the same time, it argues that inclusive scaling requires federal group structures that maintain small-group interaction by coordinating multiple affiliated groups rather than enlarging single co-production arenas. The model offers a theoretically grounded framework for understanding how co-production with vulnerable people can scale without sacrificing inclusiveness. Points for practitioners: Scaling co-production with vulnerable people requires both differentiated support for participants and organisational structures that preserve small-group interaction as numbers grow. Representative co-producers and peer mentors can be mobilised as temporary or flexible resources to lower barriers to participation, rather than as permanent substitutes for the involvement of vulnerable people themselves. Expanding participation does not require enlarging co-production forums; scale can instead be achieved by coordinating multiple small groups that enable trust, confidence and meaningful voice to be sustained.