Topic Building Resilience Mental Health Recovery College Course – Developments and Reflections 6 years on. Dr Josh Cameron and Mr Paul Neale
Date Wednesday 24 November 2021
Time 16:00 – 17:30
Location Online (please arrive in the online platform 5 minutes prior)
The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research
Session Summary
Our ‘Building Resilience for Wellbeing and Recovery’ course was co-developed by peer trainers, practitioners and an academic. Peer trainers are people with lived experience of mental health problems trained as tutors by a mental health Recovery College – in our case ‘The Sussex Recovery College’. Mental health Recovery Colleges use an educative approach to addressing mental health challenges – aiming to empower people in a non-stigmatising way. We used the Resilience Framework and our personal, practice and research expertise to design the 8 session long course. It aimed to increase people’s resilience to respond to mental health challenges using people’s inner strengths and support around them. In line with a social justice approach to resilience our course emphasises that there are some adversities (such as stigma and discrimination towards people with mental health problems) that need to be challenged and not simply ‘coped with’.
Over 800 people have now completed the course which is in it’s 6th year which has seen the development of a shorter ‘online’ version. This was in response to the challenges of COVID-19 but has potential for future use too. Our session will share our experiences and evaluations – including of the advantages and disadavantages of the online version.
Presenters
Dr Josh Cameron
Josh worked as an occupational therapist in mental health services before becoming a University of Brighton lecturer. His interest in resilience developed while researching return-to-work experiences of workers with mental health problems for his PhD. He is a member of the Centre of Resilience for Social Justice research centre at the University of Brighton leading the Adult Resilience strand. He is also a member of ‘BoingBoing’ the resilience research and practice development network. He was a co-developer of the Building Resilience for Wellbeing and Recovery course at the Sussex Recovery College. He is a co-leader of the research evaluation of Blackpool’s ‘Resilience Revolution’.
Mr Paul Neale
Paul is an experienced Senior Peer Tutor with the Sussex Recovery College and co-developer of the Building Resilience for Wellbeing and Recovery course. He also has extensive experience of co-producing and delivery a broad range of other Recovery College courses drawing on his lived experience of mental health challenges and training as a Peer Tutor.
Who might be most interested
Academics, practitioners, researchers, students, carers, community workers, service users, people with lived experience of mental health problems, adults, all ages.
Useful links
The Resilience Framework
Access Information The forum will be held online on Microsoft Teams. Please arrive in the online platform 5 minutes prior. An email with instructions will be sent out the day before the event. We have chosen this platform as it appears to be more secure and transparent in its data practices than many others. Please see our privacy statement for more information about Microsoft Teams terms and conditions.
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The Resilience Forum is for ANYBODY (with a pulse!) involved with or interested in resilience research
Previous Resilience Forums
You can find information about our previous Resilience Forums in Brighton, Blackpool, Hastings and online here. Many of our previous Resilience Forums and Centre meetings have slides you can download, blogs you can read, or short films you can watch.
