This webinar is online on Zoom
Book your place
To book a place please email events@imroc.org with “Recovery Colleges webinar” in the subject line.
Overview
Recovery Colleges are now a core part of recovery-oriented mental health systems, yet their design, delivery, and sustainability vary widely. Drawing on findings from a 31-college qualitative study across England, this webinar explores how organisational context, leadership, funding relationships, and local adaptation shape Recovery College implementation. Viewers will gain evidence-based insights into how Recovery Colleges are set up, what helps them thrive and what puts them at risk, whilst maintaining fidelity to recovery and co-production principles.
What to Expect:
Key findings from a qualitative study of 31 Recovery College managers
The role of leadership, lived experience, and “Recovery College pioneers”
How colleges adapt to local contexts, resources, and populations
The impact of organisational location and funding (including relationships with the National Health Service)
Tensions between recovery values, bureaucracy, and clinical priorities
What organisational resilience and sustainability look like in practice
Practical implications for policy, commissioning, and service development
Who is the webinar for?
People involved in the design, delivery, funding, or evaluation of recovery-oriented mental health services, including:
Recovery College managers, tutors, and peer educators
Mental health professionals and service leads
Commissioners and policy makers
Voluntary, community, and third-sector organisations
Researchers and evaluators in mental health and social care
Benefits of attending:
An understanding that Recovery Colleges are sustained not just by recovery principles, but by organisational conditions such as leadership, autonomy, partnerships and local adaptability
Gain a deeper understanding of why Recovery Colleges differ in practice, despite shared principles
Learn what organisational factors enable or hinder successful set-up and sustainability
Understand the trade-offs between autonomy and integration within larger systems
Speaker and Facilitators
Simran Takhi - Speaker
Simran is an early career researcher based at the Institute of Mental Health Nottingham, currently working on RECOLLECT 2 – The world’s largest programme studying the effectiveness of Recovery Colleges. Prior to her first research post, Simran held several clinical roles, including working as an assistant psychologist within CAMHS. Her step into research was driven by a desire to work toward shaping policy and impacting lives on a wider scale. She is passionate about connecting with stigmatised communities and has contributed to various online platforms such as National Survivors Network and Brown Girl Magazine.
Emma Watson - Facilitator
Emma Watson is the programme lead at Imroc for Research, Evaluation, Publications and Development, and, until recently, was the Peer Support Lead at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. As Peer Support Lead, she has led the strategic introduction of peer support workers into a range of clinical services, establishing training and supervision processes to support this development. Prior to this, Emma worked in a number of peer roles, including peer support worker, peer supervisor, peer trainer and peer researcher. Emma was among the first peer workers to be employed in Nottingham NHS Trust in 2010; an experience which transformed her own recovery, as well as her understanding of the power of lived experience.
As a programme lead at Imroc, Emma aspires to centre lived experience perspectives in research and publications, and offer accessible, creative ways for knowledge to be developed and shared. She is leading on the development of an MSc in Lived Experience Leadership as well as overseeing Imroc’s research and evaluation projects. Emma's commitment to advancing peer support is further demonstrated through her extensive research publications. She has authored numerous articles, as well as co-authoring the book "Peer Support in Mental Health," which provides an in-depth exploration of peer support concepts and practices. Her PhD explored peer support in the context of an NHS service, especially how this context changes or constrains peer support, and how individual peer workers resist this process