City Research Online

Abstract

Background
Family and friends (family carers) provide substantial support to those with mental ill health, often affecting their own well-being. Subsequently, family carers have their own recovery journeys. Research highlights numerous benefits of attending Recovery Colleges, but whether these apply for family carers remains unexplored.

Aims
We aimed to explore family carers’ experiences of attending Recovery Colleges across England, to understand current provision and how this might better include and support family carers.

Method
Together with lived experience researchers, this qualitative focus group study used collaborative thematic analysis of online focus groups and interviews with family carers and Recovery College staff from across England.

Results
We generated six superordinate themes: ‘The “carer” identity is not clearcut’, ‘Recovery ethos applies to family carers too’, ‘Power of lived experience’, ‘Educational focus is appealing’, ‘Family carers deserve recognition and provision’ and ‘Reaching out and fitting around family carers’. Attending Recovery Colleges developed family carers understandings and gave them skills to navigate services and support themselves and others, which furthered their own recovery journeys. Shared learning spaces were helpful, but participants felt these were not always oriented to include family carers. Our findings revealed ways Recovery Colleges could increase their relevance and accessibility to family carers.

Conclusions
The unique characteristics of Recovery Colleges suited the recovery needs of family carers. However, more resources are needed to develop this potential and reach more family carers. Family carer co-researchers enriched our findings, and discussions with the Recovery College community furthered our recommendations for practice.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal College of Psychiatrists. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Publisher Keywords:	Coproduction, family carers, mental health recovery, qualitative research, Recovery Colleges
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
Departments:	School of Health & Medical Sciences School of Health & Medical Sciences > Department of Nursing & Midwifery
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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