The recovery college really represents a journey beyond recovery for our service users and it's a journey beyond the recovery of their symptoms of mental illness that helps them transition back out of hospital into the community but also enables them to achieve more meaningful life for themselves.
The mental health partnership, which is restore response, Elmore Connections Mind and Oxford Health Foundation Trust, put together a most capable provider brief about what people suffering with mental illness in Oxfordshire would benefit from.
All of the organisations in the partnership are involved with the recovery college and from the steering group to setting it up, to taking things forward, to developing the courses, the prospectus.
The courses themselves are created, designed and then delivered by both professionals and people with lived experience of mental illness themselves.
All the courses are three hours long and students can choose whether one course is enough for them or they can continue through a series of courses.
One thing that I really love about the college is its focus on supporting people to become experts, I guess, in their own recovery, so the idea of people having more skills, more tools that they can use to help manage their recovery journey.
I've only done one course so far and I did the Exploring Confidence course and it was really good. I went in there feeling really anxious because it was a big group of people and I didn't know them and I've come out with a load of skills that I actually use now that work.
When you deliver the courses, I think it's really inspiring that the people who come along as members of the course are people with mental health problems themselves, carers are people with mental health problems and also professionals who are delivering services for mental health issues.
So they're all learning from each other, there's no sense that somebody is better than somebody else and it gives such a really rich 360 degree view of those issues.
The people with lived experience feel maybe not so alone, sometimes it's that realisation that's not just me that feels like this, this can actually happen to anybody.
I was diagnosed like 15 years ago and it's made a lot of friends, lost friends, it's one of those and obviously it affects family, it affects, I'm trying to bring some sort of balance and maybe some stability to my life.
I'm looking now and now at just what better way can I re-engage myself, I've got these experiences, are they now skills, which going to the early courses of the recovery college also may be a question.
Recovery is about the journey, not necessarily the destination, it's a creative personal journey of self acceptance and learning about what is helpful and what isn't.
It's about having a belief in yourself, feeling hopeful and in control, being able to make connections with others, setting manageable goals, having a sense of purpose and doing things that are important to you.
They are nice words, thank you our students.
