Welcome to New Leaf Recovery and Wellbeing College

At the college, we offer hope for the future despite life’s challenges, opportunity, learning from other students' experiences, equipping students with the skills to make changes to support their wellbeing. The college is not somewhere to obtain qualifications but to learn self-management and personal development.

Recovery colleges offer educational courses about mental wellbeing supporting personal recovery. The ethos is to increase students’ knowledge and skills and help them take control by learning self-management strategies to help their mental health and wellbeing. The concept emerged by recognising people as being experts in their own care, and the belief that their views should be central to their recovery journey.

New Leaf Recovery and Wellbeing College is passionate about making sure students are placed at the centre of all we do. We build on people's strengths and support people to move from ‘patient’ to ‘student’ and sometimes ‘teacher’ within the college. We work together collaboratively at every level, assisting the individual in their personal recovery journey to share and empower others in their personal recovery.

The college offers hope, opportunities and the tools for students to self-manage and takes control. We offer students support, resources, and the time to reflect to discover how to manage their own well-being.

Our student development programme offers student the opportunity to take their learning further by becoming experts by experience within the college, taking part in a range of opportunities such as co-facilitation, co-production, classroom support and more.

The core principles of the College are: 

  • Partnership and co-production
  • Educational - encouraging self-management
  • Strengths-based and person-centred
  • For everyone - people with health challenges, their relatives/carers, and staff
  • Helps people identify and reach their own goals.

The College aims to foster hope, optimism and control, enabling people to strengthen and self-manage their mental health and recovery.

College Objectives are to:

  • Co-produce all aspects of the College
  • Provide a safe place to learn new skills and expand on existing ones through connectedness with others.
  • Provide an environment that enables creative thinking of all.
  • Maintain performance and quality by providing an ethos of reflection and ensuring learning for all.

The college is free to all Hertfordshire residents aged 18 and over.

 

Explore the college

Go beyond our courses

Find helpful and inspiring blogs, articles, resources and opportunities to aid your recovery.

Your guide to good mental health

This journal includes tools and ways of supporting your wellbeing and personal mental health recovery.

You can use this journal to:

Get a sense of what personal mental health recovery is and how it helps your wellbeing
Learn about tools that can help your wellbeing and recovery
Reflect on where you are now, where you want to be and how to get there
Inspire you, encourage your creativity and help you problem-solve

 

Student blog

Be inspired and find hope!

Read inspiring personal recovery stories and discover informative newsletters, articles and college updates.

Explore blog

About Recovery

What does personal recovery mean, and why is it so important?

Read about recovery, why it’s important and how a recovery college can help people with their mental wellbeing. Learn about recovery-focused language and how you can make a difference.

About recovery

Student development

Discover our innovative student development programme and gain extra skills. 

Find out more about how you can use your personal recovery experience to inspire others.

Read the stories of our experts by experience to discover what they gained from the student development programme and how the college helped them move from student to expert by experience to permanent employee (in or outside of the college).

Student Development

Student council

Share in something great!

The role of the Student Council is to represent the voice of the students at the College.

As well as allowing students the facility to have their opinions heard, students can join and run the Student Council to help them grow in their personal recovery and develop their skills.

Explore

Recovery resources

Recovery resources

Discover recovery resources, such as wellness recovery action plans, keeping well at work plans, setting goals worksheets, wellness at university and more. 

Discover more

Using Zoom

Getting started with Zoom and digital inclusion

If you are looking for support on how to use Zoom to join the college, try our getting started with Zoom page gives you access to written guides, videos and links to troubleshooting pages.

For those looking for extra support to obtain equipment or develop your IT skills, visit our digital inclusions page.

Discover more

We inspire

Hope

We inspire hope for the future despite life's challenges.

Opportunity

We give students the opportunity to hear about the experiences of others to help them learn.

Control

We provide you with the knowledge and skills to make the changes that are right for you.

Need Support?

Enrolling at New Leaf Recovery and Wellbeing College couldn't be easier