Addressing Inclusion: Developing an innovative technology assisted learning package for educators and students for use in a UK Recovery College

Abstract

Improving Inclusion: Developing An Innovative Technology Assisted Learning Package for a UK Recovery College for Mental Health Service Users. Recovery Colleges in the UK represent a new initiative in providing support and psycho-educational interventions for people with mental health difficulties as part of the 'Recovery movement' (Williams, 2016; Perkins and Slade, 2012). Multiple barriers exist for people with mental health difficulties, particularly among ethnic minorities) in accessing such services and include (but are not limited to) -financial problems, difficulties with transport, condition-related difficulties - (e.g. poor motivation, organisational difficulties or feeling unwell) (Memon et al.,2015). To overcome this we put together a collaborative research project with a technology business partners service users and service providers to develop a new technology assisted learning project to ease access to the College's taught sessions. This involved developing sophisticated video-recording and streaming software and hardware that could 64 live-broadcast college sessions to users in their own homes via a variety of hardware platforms. Users could participate in the taught sessions by means of the video/sound interactive software on tablets, mobile devices or their home computer. The innovative features of the TAL package are described, and the impact this facility had on user participation in the college programme evaluated. Particular attention is paid to the development and partnership nature of the project development. The implications for Recovery College and mental health service provider practice is discussed with particular reference to the potential future wider application of TAL packages to promoting access across other domains of mental health care.