South Western Sydney Recovery College may have only just entered its second year of providing education programs to support mental health recovery, but the organisation’s successful transition to online learning in response to the Covid-19 pandemic has received international praise.
Recovery College is funded by South Western Sydney Primary Health Network in partnership with One Door Mental Health and is delivered by Macarthur Disability Services.
It brings together people with a lived experience, carers and service providers to learn from each other, share experiences, increase their understanding of mental health recovery and achieve individual aspirations through courses, workshops and training opportunities.
The courses are co-facilitated by two peer trainer/tutors with a mental health lived experience or a peer trainer/tutor and a mental health specialist.
While the college had always intended to introduce online learning options for students, the Covid-19 lockdown meant it had to respond quickly to bring forward the online delivery of courses.
The college’s response caught the attention of Lee Shruer from Massachusetts, USA, the co-developer of the Buried in Treasures course which is offered at the college.
South Western Sydney Recovery College manager Debbie Graham said the recovery college had put a temporary hold on courses during the summer term in response to Covid-19 to upskill its peer trainers to modify course delivery for online learning.
“This meant that students who had completed seven weeks of the Understanding Recovery course, for example, were able to complete the remaining three weeks online,” she said. “We also introduced new topics as workshops via webinars to address mental health challenges related to COVID-19.”
Mrs Graham said the first long course online was held during the autumn term using Zoom, and during the winter term the college took the extra step of moving two courses to the self-directed learning platform Catapult.
“By embracing online learning we’ve been able to increase the accessibility of our education programs for students,” she said.
“We can now deliver to all seven LGAs in our region at the one time and the webinars are proving really popular with students who are undertaking multiple topics.”
- People with a lived experience, carers and service providers are invited to South Western Sydney Recovery College’s Online Mental Health Summit during Mental Health Month in October. SWSPHN, MDS and One Door Mental Health are funding the summit which will provide access to a variety of online support and learning activities for mental health recovery and wellness. A timetable with topic descriptions, dates, times, organisations and registration links will be released on Thursday, 24 September.
To keep informed: www.swsrecoverycollege.com.au, www.facebook.com/swsrecoverycollege, swsrecoverycollege@mdservices.com.au or phone 4621 8400. To find out more about South Western Sydney Recovery College and its spring term schedule: swsrecoverycollege.com.au
