Co-Facilitation/Co-Delivery is a model by which each course is delivered.

Each Recovery College has a panel of co-facilitators which include people with lived experience of mental health challenges, people who care about them and mental health services staff.

Co-Production is a process in which people with experience of mental health challenges, people who care about those with mental health challenges, staff members who provide mental health services work collaboratively to design a course or a scheme of work, with subsequent session plans produced as necessary.

Each co-producer should have equally valued input into the course content and the finalised documentation. All comments and opinions should be fully explored and respected with time given for a full time-limited consultation process.

Any discrepancies should be dealt with and concluded within this co-production/consultation process.

The finalised document should reflect all positive contributions made during the co-production process.

All sessions/courses should adhere to the outset fidelity criteria and contribute to mental health and wellbeing.

Transformative learning is a key feature of recovery education as it aims to generate new learning and fresh perspectives on all matters related to mental health and recovery and it helps people to grow within and beyond their personal life and/or professional experiences.

Transformative learning provides students with opportunities to challenge understandings about mental health and find new ways to advance personal recovery. Self-determination also influences recovery education, by supporting learners to thrive and grow, achieve their goals and increase their levels of well-being.

Recovery Education is guided by good practice and consistent and rigorous co-production is a positive approach for recovery and mental health promotion in the community.

Recovery Education:

• Empowers people to have control over their own personal recovery. It challenges the idea of compliance and the dependent patient role.
• Reinforces social inclusion for all or ‘challenges the concept of congregated settings’
• It promotes an environment that encourages understanding, knowledge and skill development and challenges the stigma around mental health.
• Supports identifying individual learning goals that can have practical application in life. Recovery culture describes a move from paternalistic care-giving to Person Centred mental health care.
• Provides an adult learning opportunity rather than a ‘day care’ type service.

Within our communities there will be people with experience of mental health challenges, people who care about those with mental health challenges, staff members who provide mental health services and people have an interest in the area of mental health.

Recovery Education can provide people with a shared space to learn with, and from, others in a non-judgmental, accepting and encouraging environment where challenges are explored in a positive way.

For families, it can be an opportunity to reduce isolation and stigma while increasing knowledge, communications and coping skills. It can create a learning environment where both people who use services, and those who provide them, experience a different kind of relationship. This environment challenges unhelpful practice, attitudes, behaviour and prejudices of mental health so that people with lived experience of mental health challenges can feel safe, welcome, valued and accepted.

For staff, it can provide opportunities to learn new ways of supporting individuals and families affected by mental health challenges, and to find better ways to support their own mental health and wellbeing.

Recovery Education is the process by which individuals explore, assimilate and create the knowledge required for recovery in their own lives or in the lives of those they support. It involves providing educational services to, and within, local communities (HSE, 2017).

Recovery Education takes a strengths-based and adult education approach which offers the choice to engage in learning opportunities. It is influenced by the values of self-direction, personal experience, ownership, diversity, and hopefulness (HSE, 2017).

Recovery Education uses an adult education approach to facilitate mental health recovery. Module/course content is co-produced and co-facilitated by people with lived experience of mental health challenges, family members/carers/supporters, service providers and community partners.