"Recovery demonstration day"

Today I attended the Recovery Demonstration day held at Highbury Hospital in Nottingham.

Can I say how much I enjoyed the day and a very big well done to Tony Mitchell from the Trusts Learning and development Team who organized the day.

We had an overview from Dr Julie Repper who is the Trust Recovery lead.

We then had a presentation from Simon Smith who is the Executive Director of Local services who talked about the Organisational commitment to promoting a Recovery Focused approach in "all we do".

This was followed by Jo Horsley and Bev Johnson who talked about promoting Recovery practice across teams ~& services in adult Mental Health Local services

As a member of the Trust involvement team and a service user myself we had the next slot and can I say how proud I was to see, Steven, Rachel, and Donna who are service users talk about how they are involved with the Trust and what Recovery means to them, this was just outstanding and this kind of interaction by people who use services helps makes the day what it was. Truly outstanding personal stories and shows what can be achieved by a recovery strategy that gives people hope opportunity and control.

This also helps the trust listen to the people it serves which helps all involved change services, Changes Lives, and helps change the culture. Could you kindly pass on my comments to Steven, Rachel and Donna please.

The next 2 presentations where just as amazing, Helen Brown talked to us about the Recovery Education College which is run by the Trust and how this has changed the lives of a great many people, Helen went on to say that the College now runs 100 different lessons and has up to 1000, people involved. Fantastic!

We then had what I can only describe as a ‘can hear a pin drop’ presentation by Emma, who is one of our Peer Support Workers tell her story and how she now has hope opportunity and control herself and how she now helps service users on a ward base setting. I have seen a great many presentations in my time but this has to be one of the best ever.. Emma was just so passionate about what she now does, again could you let her know what a great job she did today and helping others as she does, well wow!

Our last speaker was Nicky Bennett (Education Practice Consultant) who talked about the Training she delivers to Peer support workers all over the County, I can see why the training is so valued, and Nicky was fantastic.

In conclusion The Recovery Demonstration day was a great success, with people attending from all over the county; we even had people come to see what we do from the Channel Islands.

Nottinghamshire Health care Trust… Recovery! Just fantastic.