Understanding the experiences of family, friends and carers attending Recovery Colleges

Introduction Recovery Colleges take an educational and recovery-orientated approach, offering co-produced courses to mental health staff, service user family, friends, and carers.  Studies have demonstrated benefits for students in general, but do family/friends/carers experience Recovery Colleges in the same way, and can they be made more relevant or accessible for them?



Methods Through exploring the experiences of family, friends and carers as well as staff at Recovery Colleges, we aimed to identify perceived benefits and contributors to these, to inform practice.



Family, friends and carers and Recovery College staff were recruited from different Recovery Colleges across England, to attend online focus groups/interviews. Questions were codesigned with a family/friend/carer co-researcher.  Transcripts were analysed collaboratively with two family/friend/carer co-researchers using thematic analysis.  Findings were presented in an interactive webinar to gain further insights about how Recovery Colleges implement findings.



Results Thirteen family/friends/ carers and ten Recovery College staff with varied characteristics participated.  Six key themes were developed; ‘What is a carer?’, ‘Benefits of sharing lived experience’, ‘Educational focus is appealing’, ‘Recovery ethos applies to family, friends and carers too’, ‘Family, friends and carers deserve recognition and provision’, ‘Reaching out to family, friends and carers’.  Participants shared how attending courses gave them new understandings, caring and wellbeing strategies, for themselves and those they cared for.  Importantly, family carers described the College as supporting their own personal recovery journeys.  Learning alongside service users was beneficial, but Colleges need to recognise carers specifically.  Colleges should raise awareness about what a Recovery College can offer, to make this available to more family, friends and carers.   



Conclusion The identified needs of family, friends and carers aligned well with the unique characteristics of Recovery Colleges.  Further resources and increased awareness are required to further develop this potential for supporting more family, friends and carers in their own recovery.