RECOLLECT
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Recovery College Characterisation and Testing
IRAS ID
211925
Contact name
Mike Slade
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 31 days
Research summary
Mental health services provide treatments (e.g. medicine, talking therapy)
to people with mental health problems. Treatments often reduce, but do
not completely cure, the problems, meaning that many people live with
mental health problems long-term. Support involves helping people to live
well even when they have ongoing symptoms.
Recovery Colleges are a new approach to supporting people living with
mental health problems. They are collaborative, strengths-based, personcentred,
inclusive (i.e. available to all) and community-focused. A Recovery
College provides support to students (mainly mental health service users
but also family members, staff and other stakeholders) through adult
education rather than through medical treatments. Service users are not
referred by clinicians but enrol themselves, develop an Individual Learning
Plan and then choose courses relevant to their learning goals. Professional
experts and people with personal experience of mental health problems
co-produce the curriculum and co-deliver the courses.
The first Recovery Colleges opened in 2010, and there are now 32 across
England, each working with up to 1,000 students at any time. But there has
been little work studying the impact of Recovery Colleges.
The aim of this study is to address three important questions.
1. What are the defining characteristics of a Recovery College, and
how does it differ from other medical and adult education
approaches?
We will interview 10 Recovery College managers to develop a tool to
assess the presence of each necessary characteristic (a fidelity measure).
This measure will be piloted with 3 Recovery Colleges) then evaluated with
all Recovery Colleges.
2. How do Recovery Colleges benefit service users?
For example, self-referral may promote empowerment, jointly-delivered
training may role model partnership working, and hearing a trainer talk
about their own mental health problems may make the service user less
pessimistic about their own recovery. We will interview up to 45 opinion
leaders (e.g. service user students, Recovery College managers) to develop a list of possible mechanisms of action to formally evaluate Recovery Colleges.
3. Who uses Recovery Colleges?
About two thirds of students also use secondary mental health services,
but there has been no detailed analysis of their service use, such as
diagnosis, level of disability and how often they are hospitalised. We will
study all available national reports and use the clinical information systems
in 3 Recovery Colleges to understand who uses the college, and how they
differ from service users who do not use the college.
People with personal experience of mental health problems are at the
heart of this proposal, including as applicants and advisors. We will also
form an Innovation Network, to bring together all stakeholders (including
service users, carers and staff) to support the study.
This study will provide a foundation for a subsequent research programmeREC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 1 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/EM/0484
Date of REC Opinion
18 Jan 2017
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion