"Nottingham Recovery College"

For the most part, this service was great. I’d never attended anything like it. It takes an educational approach to coping mechanisms, dealing with situations and learning about types of mental disorders. It involves a lot of group work, but there is no pressure or judgement and the teaching staff were fun, engaging and understanding. 

Unfortunately, my time there was cut short because of the pandemic starting in the middle of my first term there. Understandably, the college had to shut. However, I then received absolutely no communication from them whatsoever. No updates, no forwarding of resources to help us continue things at home, no checking in to see how we were doing. Not even a message or letter etc to encourage us to contact them if we needed someone to speak to. This was particularly disheartening as it was a programme that encouraged looking out for each other and supporting each other. They had our contact details, and a lot of people relied on this service for structure, a reason to get out of the house and interact with people, a useful tool in helping them cope with life. Yet there was nothing to help us in the pandemic. Thankfully, I did not rely on this service heavily enough for the lack of contact to have a huge detrimental affect on my life, but I know a lot of others did and I really hope the lack of support did not cause them too much distress. It was quite sad to think it was all an act, that they didn’t really care at all and as soon as there was a reason to wash their hands off us completely without the repercussions of us being there to react in front of them, they took it. I know it’s probably not as deep as that, but it certainly felt like it. Especially given the nature of people that use this service, it was rather insensitive and disappointing for us to be left with nothing, to be cut off so abruptly.