"Recovery & Moving on."

I am 24 years old and live with my mum in Nottingham. My first contact with Social Inclusion & Wellbeing team was when I met Mel Simpson who is an employment specialist with the team. Mel’s job is to help people get back into work. I had not been in work for a while and Mel helped me to look for some voluntary work. to start with. He thought I could benefit from doing some other activities where I could meet people and do some things I enjoy doing. He got his colleagues Rachel and Anna to come and see me. Rachel and Anna helped me to find things in the community that suited me. Anne helped me to get confident using buses and get a bus pass. Part of the bus practice was going to the Recovery College where I signed up for some courses. Anna also got me onto a cooking course at Gateway to Nature. I had my first ever trip on the tram to get to the cooking course. The next thing I did with support from Anna was visit AMC community garden where Ridewise do Thursday morning bike rides. In the summer I joined the Ridewise Community Bike Riding Group and I enjoy doing that every Thursday. Next, Mel took me to visit Woodfield Industries where people do various recycling jobs. I was a bit nervous about it but decided to give it a try. I liked it and am now doing one day a week there.

I still go to college but when my course finishes I will do another day recycling. Both me and my mum think that I have progressed a lot in the last 9 months.