• Mental Health First Aid Courses 2010
• Suicide Prevention & Intervention Training
• Helen Glover Recovery Principles Training

Recovery Principles Training with Helen Glover

A consultant, researcher, speaker, educator, lecturer and person with a lived experience of mental illness, Helen Glover uses her professional and lived experience to expand and challenge the concepts of recovery within mental health service delivery.

For the past few years MHACA has invited Helen to Alice Springs to run workshops for consumers, management and staff and each year we look forward to her visit. The following articles are a summary of some of her previous workshops –

• Helen Glover training 2009
• Helen Glover training 2006
• Helen Glover training 2005

Important Questions

Helen emphasises that as service providers it is important to “keep asking questions and have open discussions” about what we do - to ensure that programs continue to benefit the people we work with. Some of the questions Helen raises include:

• HOW do we define and evaluate someone's recovery? Who decides?
• WHAT role does self-empowerment have in recovery? Does compliance mean progress?
• HOW do we effectively engage consumers and carers in our programs? Do we actively listen, encourage and support or do we impose our own ideas of wellness and conformity?
• HOW can we effectively keep evolving as a service? Like going to the gym and maintaining our fitness, we need to keep 'training and working out' to stay fit – we need to stay flexible to stay effective
• WHAT is happening elsewhere – in non-medical models? In other services? Around the world?

Having lived through and significantly recovered from her own mental illness, Helen speaks passionately on some of the troughs and peaks of her own journey of recovery. She believes that as workers it is not our job to change or 'fix' people - to act as if they are broken - but to relate to people as whole human beings: to respect and appreciate each person's journey and help people re-define themselves through their abilities (what they can do) rather than their disabilities.

Working nationally & internationally
Helen has spoken and lectured internationally on the challenges and opportunities of the provision and development of recovery-oriented mental health services. She has worked primarily within Australia and England, with fellow professionals and those that use services and their families, to promote practices that support wellness.

She has also worked as the Chief Executive Officer of CHANGE in Birmingham, UK. CHANGE provides residential and community crisis recovery alternatives to hospital admissions and is staffed by recovery guides who identify primarily with the lived experience of their own recovery from mental health difficulties.

In 2001 Helen was commissioned by the National Institute for Mental Health England (NIMHE) to write its discussion papers on “ Developing Recovery-Orientated Services for Mental Health Services in England”. She has also been a co-researcher in an Australian study Recovery from Schizophrenia from a Consumer Perspective. On her return to Australia in 2004 she accepted a position with Queensland Health to develop and deliver a curriculum for mental health professionals on recovery-orientated practice .

For further information please contact Helen Glover at enLightened Consultants
on 0433 537 444 or email helen@enlightened.com.au