** Stop press** The Recovery In-Sight Social Enterprise (RISE) is now an approved service provider to Jobcentreplus and a Tier 3 provider working with Shaw Trust and their other partners for the new Work Choice programme - offering individualised programmes of recovery and job skills training running alongside practical work placements in our supportive user-led office environment. Work Choice replaces the previous Work Prep and Work Step programmes and started in October 2010.

From 1st September 2010, RISE has been offering excellent voluntary opportunities when it relocated to The Old Free School, George Street, Watford, WD18 0BX. This continued its work of offering these practical opportunities when it was based in the Business Park in Hatfield for its first year.

However, these are not ordinary opportunities to engage in the work of the newly-created social enterprise - promoting the training, peer support and self-help, research and advisory services that the Centre offers - it is also an opportunity to refresh your job skills in an office environment such as administration, IT, marketing and sales, and communications/PR, with a view to return to the job market.

It is also a chance to become an In-Sight trainer, if you have previously followed one of our seven Recovery In-Sight courses and for you to benefit from our in-house training programme, and look at taking up the PTTLS City & Guilds Preparing to Teach qualification, that will give you a firm basis upon which to develop your training skills.

As The Recovery In-Sight Social Enterprise is user-led, everyone engaged in the work is or has been affected by mental health problems themselves. In fact, we positively discriminate and recruit those who have been affected by mental health problems in order to help people in their recovery.

Many of our staff have experienced workplace stress so the way we run The Recovery In-Sight Social Enterprise takes into account policies such as Wellbeing at Work 2009 and the Perkins Review - ensuring that we accommodate your recovery needs as we also accommodate your changing and developing office skills needs. We do this by enabling you to develop in the work you do, within a supportive environment working alongside our staff who are trained in the Recovery In-Sight training, who will help you manage your mental health whilst also helping you hone your job skills.

It is possible to change the days that you work, rather than keeping to one or two fixed days; work mornings or afternoons to start with; work from home at times if you are unable to come into the office; vary the workload so that you do not feel overloaded or increase the workload when you are ready and are able to cope in order to build up your resilience; personally develop within the office so that you are able to do different jobs and renew different skills, rather than stick to one kind of work. We also support your personal development and job goals, so as well as helping you to prepare for and find they job you want, if you have a project or idea that can be developed within the context of the services we provide, we would support this.

It is also possible to receive short bursts of Recovery In-Sight training, so that your interpersonal and self-management skills are developed alongside your job skills and practical work in a business environment. You will receive ‘on the job’ training by our staff, so that you learn the skills you need to do the job, in a practical ‘hands on’ way, not as a theoretical course.

And what is the aim of this?

We aim to provide a ‘pre-back-to-work’ environment, ideal for someone affected by mental health problems, who needs some space and time to refresh job skills, in a team of like-minded others, whilst also managing their health before taking what feels like, at times, the huge step of returning to the wider job market.

This supportive environment we have provided in the last year in Hatfield and now from September in Watford, has been helpful to many people who have been able to build up their confidence and resilience, and who have later gone on to seek work, take up higher education, changed employers to more mental health ‘friendly’ ones, and been able to cope better in the workplace.

Many who have benefited from this understanding workplace have also gone on to be employed by The Recovery In-Sight Social Enterprise as office workers and as trainers or group facilitators. Many are also volunteers who help to run one of the two bipolar support groups that RISE offers.

We are now an approved service provider of recovery and job skills training and voluntary practical placements to Jobcentreplus, and have a service level agreement with Shaw Trust to provide this kind of individualised balance of both recovery skills alongside job skills training whilst also enabling you to build these practical skills in a fully-functioning office environment at our Centre, which will enable you to become more resilient and equipped in the workplace, so that you are more able to get and keep the job you wish to aim for.

More about the types of training we offer will follow. However, this is drawn from training which has been proven to be effective in developing skills and resilience in recovery and the workplace.

So - if you are at the stage of wishing to return to work, but this seems a bit daunting at the moment as perhaps you feel you need to build up your recovery skills and refresh your job skills before being able to sustain employment in the wider job market, then give us a call. It may be that you only need a couple of weeks with us before your confidence returns.

Get in touch to find out more - 01923-297122

Arrange to come in for an induction day to discuss your job and recovery needs, and we can take it from there.

Look at the pages on Volunteer Testimonies - to find out how other volunteer workers are progressing with us.

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