Exploring the carer experience of Recovery Colleges
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding the experiences of family/ informal carers of attending Recovery Colleges: a focus group study.
IRAS ID
311832
Contact name
Bryher Bowness
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College, London
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, 1 days
Research summary
The study will involve conducting focus groups with family and informal carers who have attended a Recovery College. Recovery Colleges are an innovative approach to supporting people living with mental health problems. They are collaborative, strengths-based, person-centred, inclusive and community-focused. A Recovery College provides support to students, mainly mental health service users but also family members, staff and other stakeholders, through an adult education approach. Informal carers can be defined as people who provide support to a family member, partner or friend who need help because of illness, frailty, disability, a mental health problem or an addiction, without getting paid (NHS England, 2014). Around 10% of students at Recovery Colleges identify primarily as informal carers to someone using mental health services (Meddings et al, 2014), but to date specific research has not been conducted to explore their experiences of attending.
The aim of the proposed research is to gain an understanding of current provision for informal/ family carers at Recovery Colleges, the experiences and perceived value for carers of attending a Recovery College, and the challenges they face in doing so. This information may help Recovery Colleges to better support students who are carers.
The research will use group discussions with people who have attended or enrolled at a Recovery College, who are also family/ friends of someone with a mental health problem. There will also be a group discussion with the Carer Leads who work at a sample of different Recovery Colleges. These discussions will then be analysed for themes.
REC name
North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee 2
REC reference
22/NS/0116
Date of REC Opinion
29 Sep 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion