HF Care and our Culturally Competent Recovery College explores how HF Care, a Toronto-based mental health organisation, developed Canada's first culturally competent Recovery College to serve East and Southeast Asian communities. Published by Imroc, this paper covers the organisation's history, its coproduction approach, and the lessons learned in building a recovery model that bridges Western mental health principles with Asian cultural perspectives.

Extremely Human: A Discovery College Journey into Storytelling and Shared Learning is a free Imroc 'Sharing Our Experience' paper exploring how Melbourne's youth-focused Discovery College expanded its recovery college model through an award-winning podcast. Written by Claire Harcla and Lucy Mahony, the paper charts the origins and evolution of Discovery College, its co-production principles, and how the Extremely Human podcast brings lived experience storytelling to mental health communities worldwide. Ideal for mental health professionals, clinicians, recovery college practitioners, and anyone interested in innovative approaches to mental health education, peer support, and shared learning. Download the full paper to explore how recovery college principles can live in new formats — and how storytelling can transform mental health services.

Discover how Discovery College West in Ireland is transforming youth mental health through co-produced Recovery Education. This fourth paper in Imroc's 'Sharing Our Experience' series traces the development of a pioneering youth-focused Recovery College serving young people in Roscommon and East Galway — from early consultations with young people, families, CAMHS, and youth organisations, through four key stages of growth.

Inspired by the success of Discovery Colleges in Australia, the UK, New Zealand, and Canada, the Irish model puts lived experience and co-production at its core. The paper explores real challenges faced along the way — avoiding tokenistic participation, building organisational commitment, and measuring impact — while demonstrating how meeting young people where they are, in schools, youth groups, and clubs, is key to meaningful engagement.

A must-read for anyone involved in Recovery Education, mental health services, or youth wellbeing, this paper shows how a small pilot can evolve into a dynamic, nationally relevant model of Recovery Education that continues to grow, adapt, and inspire.

This third paper in Imroc’s Recovery Colleges: Sharing Our Experience series explores how Lincolnshire Recovery College has worked to include unpaid family carers in its offer. Building on previous papers that highlighted the development of Recovery Colleges in clinical settings and the importance of cultural inclusivity, this contribution shares practical insights into designing and delivering courses for family carers—highlighting both the challenges encountered and the benefits of greater inclusion.

This paper presents a trauma-informed, recovery-focused approach to improving acute inpatient care at Coventry and Warwickshire Partnership NHS Trust, in partnership with Imroc. The initiative empowers staff to work alongside the people they serve, driving meaningful change.

At Imroc, we believe real transformation happens when values-based approaches are embedded within systems. Guided by the Imroc Acute Care briefing paper, this work provides a structured framework for innovation. Through our Sharing Experiences papers, we showcase practical examples of how recovery-oriented approaches can be implemented within large systems, inspiring change beyond individual organisations.

Inspired by Imroc’s transformative event, Peer Support: Visions of Opportunity for 2030, this report explores the future of peer support through the lens of equity, diversity, and inclusion. With insights from 180 passionate participants, it delves into strategies for expanding peer support, the potential for an oversight body, and how organisations can meaningfully support Peer Support Workers (PSWs). Through diverse voices, this reflection captures the complex journey toward a more inclusive and effective peer support movement.

This is the second paper in the ‘Sharing our Experience’ series that is designed to explore different facets of Recovery Colleges and how the principles on which they are based (see Perkins et al, 2018) are realised in different contexts. In the first paper in this ‘Sharing Our Experience’ series, colleagues from the Recovery College within the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences in Canada provided insights into the creative and thoughtful ways in which the core principles of a Recovery College were realised in practice in a largely clinical mental health service as a core part of a broader ‘Recovery Action Plan’.

Since the idea of ‘Recovery Colleges’ was first introduced in 2006/7, they have been taken up widely both across the UK and in many other parts of the world. Increasingly Recovery Colleges form a core part of recovery focused mental health services: they both embody the recovery-focused transformation of services and drive broader organisational change across services.