Abstract
The topic of co-production of public services has gained a lot of appeal among academics and practitioners. However, there is a lack of studies that investigate the role of co-production of public services throughout the cycle of public services management. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing a case study of co-production of services for autistic children in a context of multi-level governance. Findings show that prompting co-production across all the stages of public services management (co-planning, co-design, co-delivery, co-evaluation) requires new skills and new organizational arrangements even though, in institutional contexts of ‘civil law’ such as Italy, the processes of co-production must also be implemented consistently with procedures and tools provided by law. Finally, findings point to the role of trust among the actors involved as a key variable for the development of co-production along the different stages of public services management.