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Recovery Colleges are an innovative approach which adopt an educational paradigm and use clinician and lived experience to support students with their personal recovery. They demonstrate recovery-orientated practice and their transformative role has been evidenced within mental health services. The purpose of this study is to explore how past students understand the influence of the Recovery College on their on-going recovery journey.

An exploratory, qualitative design was used and semi-structured interviews took place with 15 participants. Data was analysed using the “framework method” and inductive processes.

All participants discussed gains made following Recovery College attendance that were sustained at one year follow-up. Three themes emerged from the data: Ethos of recovery and equality; Springboard to opportunities; and Intrapersonal changes.

This research explores students’ experiences a year after attendance. This contrasts to most research which is completed immediately post course. This study contributes to the emergent evidence base highlighting the longitudinal positive impact of Recovery Colleges. This study is of value to those interested in recovery-oriented models within mental health. Recovery Colleges are gaining traction nationally and internationally and this research highlights processes underlying this intervention which is of importance to those developing new Recovery Colleges.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the process of using a co-production partnership approach in the development of a Recovery College pilot.

This is a case study of the co-production process, using action research to learn from ongoing reflection, mid-project review and feedback questionnaires.

The partnership process is an integral and valued aspect of the Recovery College. Challenges include different organisational cultures and processes and the additional time required. Mutual respect, appreciation of different expertise, communication, a shared vision and development plan have been key to success. The paper focused on governance and fidelity; recruitment and training; curriculum development and evaluation. People are enthusiastic and motivated. Co-production and equal partnership are a valuable approach to developing a Recovery College.

At present many regions are developing Recovery Colleges. This paper describes one approach and shows that co-production is valuable to the process of developing a Recovery College.

This study used vignettes to examine the understanding and application of the concept of duty of care by health and social care staff working in learning disability services, and the relationship of this to promoting client choice. The study found that health care staff had a significantly broader understanding of the concept of duty of care than social care staff, and were significantly more likely to emphasise client safety. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the views and attitudes that psychiatrists have about recovery colleges (RCs).

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten psychiatrists from the Norfolk and Suffolk Foundation Trust.

Psychiatrists had a strong concept of the RC model, and were broadly positive about it, recognising many benefits. Various challenges were also acknowledged including how the RC model interacts with the medical model.

This is the first known study to explore solely the psychiatrists’ views of RCs, a group who are likely to be particularly influential within services. The sample was relatively unexposed to RCs, enabling insight into how the RC is perceived by those outside of its functioning as well as the state of wider organisational support, which is important for the success of RCs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Recovery College from a student perspective and consider what contributes to making Recovery College effective.

The authors draw on interviews with students, course feedback forms, a detailed narrative of one of the authors’ experiences as a student and the authors’ own reflections.

Students’ experience is that Recovery College is effective because of the social relational factors, learning from other students and the collaborative co-production approach; the educational approach learning skills and knowledge, and choice and progression to personal goals.

This paper explores key aspects of Recovery College from a student perspective, informing the authors about possible components to their effectiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how personalised technology can be used to support people with learning disabilities as they age and face the onset of dementia.

National learning disability charity, Hft, focuses on its Gloucestershire service at Old Quarries, using individual case studies of adults with dementia who are using personalised technology on a daily basis to illustrate how personalised technology has made a difference to their lives.

In all the case studies featured the individuals concerned were able to use personalised technology to empower them to live more independently and safely and to remain at a location where they have lived for many years rather than being moved into alternative, unfamiliar accommodation. Personalised technology has enabled them to make important life choices.

Hft believes that people with learning disabilities should be supported to live their lives in the way that they want and that creative solutions can be found to enable individuals to do this.

The problems of shear flexible beams are analyzed by the MLPG method based on a locking‐free weak formulation. In order for the weak formulation to be locking‐free, the numerical characteristics of the variational functional for a shear flexible beam, in the thin beam limit, are discussed. Based on these discussions a locking‐free local symmetric weak form is derived by changing the set of two dependent variables in governing equations from that of transverse displacement and total rotation to the set of transverse displacement and transverse shear strain. For the interpolation of the chosen set of dependent variables (i.e. transverse displacement and transverse shear strain) in the locking‐free local symmetric weak form, the recently proposed generalized moving least squares (GMLS) interpolation scheme is utilized, in order to introduce the derivative of the transverse displacement as an additional nodal degree of freedom, independent of the nodal transverse displacement. Through numerical examples, convergence tests are performed. To identify the locking‐free nature of the proposed method, problems of shear flexible beams in the thick beam limit and in the thin beam limit are analyzed, and the numerical results are compared with analytical solutions. The potential of using the truly meshless local Petrov‐Galerkin (MLPG) method is established as a new paradigm in totally locking‐free computational analyses of shear flexible plates and shells.

The purpose of this paper is to report the findings from reflexive data collection on the evolving co-production research relationship between the two “worlds” of community and academia: people with lived experience and their community intermediaries and academic researchers. It reports analysis of reflections on experience as the different partners explore and evaluate their own experiences of co-productive research within the context of substance use recovery co-production research.

The research uses reflexive data from perspectives of an intermediary community partner, academic partners, and community researchers on experiences of a series of co-productive research projects. The aim is to identify thematic features of the co-productive experiences from different positions and through the process of adaptation to a co-productive relationship.

This paper outlines what has been learnt from the experience of co-production and what has “worked” for community and academic partners; around the nature of co-production, barriers to performance, and its value to participants and the wider recovery research agenda.

This paper reports a unique perspective on a developing methodology in health and social care, contributing to a growing body of knowledge pertaining to experiences of co-production research.

Insecure and unresolved attachments have been linked to poorer psychological health and interpersonal functioning for people with intellectual disabilities (IDs), but research in this area is limited, especially for adults. Studies using the Adult Attachment Projective (AAP) have been restricted to clinical samples, where insecure and unresolved attachments are typically more prevalent. The purpose of this study is to compare clinical and non-clinical groups of adults with IDs on the AAP, plus measures of psychological health and interpersonal functioning, to investigate whether group differences found in the typically developing population are also present for adults with IDs.

A cross-sectional, between-group design was used. Adults with IDs (clinical group n = 11 and non-clinical group n = 13) completed measures of attachment, psychological distress/positive well-being and interpersonal functioning. Attachment classifications were compared in the clinical versus non-clinical groups. Measures of psychological distress, positive well-being and interpersonal functioning were compared between those with insecure-organised versus unresolved classifications.

No participants were classified as secure, and there were high rates of unresolved attachment. There were no differences between clinical and non-clinical groups with regards to the distribution of insecure-organised (i.e. dismissing or preoccupied) versus unresolved classifications. There were no differences between groups with regards to psychological distress, positive well-being or interpersonal functioning. The authors consider limitations in the method of group differentiation and suggest further research to better understand the development of internal working models of attachment in this population.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of only three to examine attachment state of mind in adults with IDs using the AAP and the first to examine differences between clinical and non-clinical groups.

The purpose of this paper is to present a fast and contactless measurement method to determine the spatial conductivity distribution within an intrinsically conducting polymer, more precisely a conductive rubber sheet specimen. As a consequence of the manufacturing process and the material composition, the conductivity distribution within the sheet is assumed to be inhomogeneous.

The current density distribution within the conductive rubber sheet due to an excitation current is estimated from the measured magnetic field distribution. Therefore, a GMR sensor is used to spatially sample the magnetic field above the specimen. Based on the estimated current density distribution and alternatively the local power dissipation calculated from a thermal image, the conductivity distribution within the specimen is determined. For comparison a reference measurement with a classical resistivity probe is done.

The measurement results show a good agreement between the developed and the classical method. Moreover, the developed measurement method requires less time and still offers a higher spatial resolution.

The presented results demonstrate the potential of the developed measurement method for determining the conductivity distribution within thin and planar specimens. Furthermore, conclusions can be drawn about the material homogeneity of the used test specimen.