Recovery College Update & Engagement Dates
As requested through the Live Well Mental Health Planning & Development Partnership Board on 21st January, please find below and attached information which you will need to have a greater understanding of what a Recovery College is and the current work Penny is undertaking at Powys as the Peer Lead. Please share this information widely with your teams.
Due to the discussion in the room about the transformative nature of a Recovery College, I wanted to high-light a couple of it’s features which make it different and system changing.
Anyone can be a student. People with experience of mental health challenges, whether they have used services or not, and people in a position to support someone in that situation whether paid or not, can all be students and learn together as equals. Although courses are designed and delivered by a team of one person with expertise from experience of mental health challenges and one person with expertise from qualifications and professional experience in mental health, they are leaders of conversations between all the people on the course whose expertise is seen as equal, rather than being founts of knowledge regarding what is going to work for others. The learning is ‘democratised’, owned by the group, and responsibility for courses is shared. This breaks the expert/non-expert relationship, which is one that discourages people from finding their own solutions. The responsibility in the group creates more initiative and self-determination, (control).
The college creates hope for people, for themselves and for others, through opening up space for people to explore and demonstrate what they have themselves achieved, and to see the progress of others. This nurtures people’s ambition and belief in what may be possible.
By valuing all group members’ expertise equally and sharing decisions about course topics and content, the college embodies good co-productive practice. It demonstrates how the relationship between the person with mental health challenges and those who support them has more impact when the expertise and ambitions of the person with mental health challenges are honoured. This changes the clinical practice of the staff involved, who then share their enthusiasm for this way of working with their colleagues.
To find out more please come to one of our face to face or online engagement events which start at Builth Wells on Thursday 30th January from 11.30 to 2.30 with lunch provided. A poster is attached for the dates, venues and booking details.
There will also be a survey which will be circulated. The information from the engagement and survey will be fed into a co-production event to inform what will go into the business case, which will be used to apply for funding. This event will be on the 18th of March from 11.30 to 2.30 in the Metropole, Llandrindod. Lunch will be provided.