Recovery College Online
The Recovery College Online provides a range of online educational courses and resources to people with experience of mental illness, from service users to their family, friends and staff.
We provide information and courses for:
- Adult mental health
- Carers
- Young people
- Parents
- Teachers
- Other professionals
- Anyone interested in mental health and wellbeing
ARCH Recovery College
ARCH Recovery College offers courses based on recovery principles.
Courses are available for service users, carers and staff.
ARCH Recovery College is located in central Durham, based at St Margaret’s Health Centre.
The recovery college offers:
- A resource base for service users, carers and staff
- An opportunity for people with lived experience of mental health issues to develop skills and explore opportunities
- An opportunity for staff to become more recovery focused in their practice and to consider their own wellbeing
- A place where service users, carers and staff learn together as students
- Courses delivered in co-production by experts by experience and experts by profession
Course and workshops information
Detailed information on our courses is available in our prospectus.
Sessions and courses taught at the college include:
- Walking Group
- Mind, Body & Spirit
- Photography Walk
- Mindful Moments
- Positive Psychology Toolkit
- Walking the Seasons
- Exploring Social Anxiety
If you wish to find out about courses, please contact us.
Courses, workshops and activities are booked on a first-come, first-served basis.
How to book a course at ARCH recovery college
If you are interested in attending a course, first you need to be enrolled with the college.
To do this, you need to contact the office on 0191 384 3895 (Option 2) or email
[email protected] and arrange a meeting to be enrolled.
You may also be referred to the college by your care team.
One of the peer trainers will meet with you face-to-face to discuss what kind of courses may be of interest to you as well as taking your contact details and completing a short questionnaire.
If you have any other queries however, please contact the college team who will be more than happy to help you.
For further information
Durham ARCH Recovery College has been developed with the support of the following organisations:
- Aspire
- Durham County Council
- Durham County Wide Forum
- Durham Dales, Easington and and Sedgefield Clinical Commissioning Group
- North Durham Clinical Commissioning Group
- Stonham Home Group
- Waddington Street Centre
Follow us on Twitter @archrecovery
Like us on Facebook /durhamrecoverycollege
Is ARCH Recovery College for me?
We offer a number of courses which are primarily based around group discussion.
This includes sharing ideas and opinions; sharing our stories of recovery and our journeys so far and talking about different diagnosis to gain a greater understanding of mental health.
The group size is usually between 10 and 12 people which allows for good discussion and gives each person the chance to share their ideas and experiences if they wish.
Each of our sessions is delivered by an expert by profession and an expert by experience, which often gives a differing perspective on the topic being discussed.
Content on the website has been co-written from different perspectives and includes overview from those with lived experience. There are service user stories on the site along with site information, views and opinions, as well as the e-learning resources.
What do we mean by recovery?
Recovery is a personal journey. You might already have, or are at least developing, your own definition of what recovery means to you.
Personal recovery is felt to be much more relevant when we are thinking about mental health and distress, as often it is not the diagnosed symptoms that are the most troubling thing for people. They may wish to have a greater sense of purpose, an understanding of their distress or more control over what happens to them.
Although reducing symptoms or certain feelings by using things like medication and therapy is very important and useful for many people, personal recovery goes way beyond treatment.
Everyone’s ideas about their own recovery will be different, and this is why it can be difficult to describe exactly what recovery is.
