Wakefield Recovery and Wellbeing College

Wakefield Recovery and Wellbeing College:

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Wakefield Recovery and Wellbeing College

(Previously known as the Wakefield and 5 Towns Recovery College) Welcome to the Wakefield Recovery and Wellbeing College; our growing, co-produced recovery college, covering the whole of the Wakefield District, from west to east, the five towns, the south east and much further beyond the district borders.

We are one of three community recovery and wellbeing colleges within the South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Other recovery colleges within the Trust are the Barnsley Recovery and Wellbeing College and the Calderdale and Kirklees Recovery and Wellbeing College. You are welcome to attend any of our recovery and wellbeing colleges, no matter where you live or where your GP is based.

We also have very close links with our inpatient and forensic wards at the Trust, offering inpatient courses and workshops to those who wish to attend whilst in hospital.

We are open to all adults (anyone over the age of 18, with no upper age limit) who would like to improve their own mental and/or physical wellbeing or knowledge, that of someone they love or care for, and to those who wish to aid their work with others. We offer a range of courses and one-off workshops (both face to face and online) which all aim to improve wellbeing through learning.

Some of our popular courses include:

• Understanding and managing depression
• Living with anxiety
• Baking basics
• Understanding post-traumatic stress reactions
• An introduction to mindfulness
• New beginnings
• Craft taster

“Going to this fantastic place has improved my life in a very good way! Very supportive, friendly and professional…Thank you!”

As you might imagine, Covid-19 (coronavirus) has altered how we are able to offer our courses and workshops and has limited the topics we can cover. You can, however, attend any of our online courses and take a look at our previous prospectuses for the types of courses we usually would offer. You can still express an interest in any of our past course topics via our enrolment form and we will be in touch if and when we have a new date available for these topics.

Last year…

• 99% of our students told us they would recommend us to their friends and family after attending a course or workshop with us.
• Our youngest student was 19 and our oldest was 87!
• A little under 1/2 of our students identified as having a long term health condition or being disabled.
• Over 1/3 of our students told us that they were in employment, volunteering, studying or retired.
• Over 3/4 of our students told us that they were able to put the things they learned with us in to practice.
• Over 50% of our students felt comfortable to go on and access other things in their communities after attending the College.
• 1/4 of our students went on to employment, education or volunteering  and attributed this positive change to attending the College.

“Keep up the good work! The reasons for not needing to see my GP as often is due to what I have learned about my mental health conditions.”

Our courses and workshops focus on being mentally and physically healthy, staying well and developing the knowledge, skills and strength to overcome the challenges that we can all face at times in our lives.

Courses aren’t therapy – our aim is to provide a positive learning approach in which we all share knowledge and provide the space to reflect on your own health and understanding, learning ways to self-manage health and wellbeing.

“I have enjoyed all my courses and benefited greatly. Drury Lane Wellbeing Centre is perfect because they have thought about people with physical disabilities.”

The Wakefield Recovery and Wellbeing College has two bases. Our main base is at Drury Lane Health and Wellbeing Centre in the middle of Wakefield city centre. This is where we conduct most of our administration tasks, receive our post and host some of our courses. We also have our sister base at Baghill House Health and Wellbeing Centre in Pontefract, where our staff team are based for some of the week and where we host half of our courses from.