The weeks are whizzing by

The weeks are whizzing by, the Stroud recovery champion’s course was really good to be part of. The venue was fantastic, beautiful views & gardens, lovely ambience; food was gorgeous, put on about half a stone. The participants were challenging, engaged & by the end of the week champing at the bit to return to their services & start some changes. One women in particular had her light bulb moment on the last day, it was truly wonderful to watch her suddenly release all the pent up negativity of working in a system that had demoralized her thrown away as she realized that recovery was possible including her own.

They bought us a present of a beautiful spiral sculpture made by a craftsman in the grounds whilst we were there, I attach some photo’s it is very beautiful.

After Stroud it was a return to the island to make ready for our trip to Australia. First Ron, who travelled to Sweden first to take part in 2 conferences in Stockholm & Gothenburg, He then returned to Glasgow & flew out to Australia the next morning.

Meanwhile I had been sorting everything out on the island so that the kids and me could make our journey out to Australia 6 days later. House gutted & cleaned it looked livable in by the time I left. Pigs sorted with an assortment of relatives staying at the house whilst we are away & Brian in charge of pigs for some of the time. Accounts up to date, vat ready to go, book orders all sent out, by the evening of our flight to Glasgow I was exhausted.

Overnight stay at the airport & finally we were ready to fly taking Karen from Lewis with us to help look after the kids whilst we are working. Needing looking after myself I had an half hour massage at the airport & became completely chilled before boarding.

The kids were fantastic on the flights they are such seasoned travelers now, though Frankie wanted to stay on the island to finish her Viking project & Finn was miffed because he is missing a game of football whilst away.
Now we are here in Perth, it’s the night before our first recovery course the weather over the weekend has been lovely & we have spent most of the day in the swimming pool with the kids. Ron & I sat earlier thinking what an amazingly lucky life we have. Yes we work hard, yes it can be stressful but how many people get to do a job they love in fantastic locations and with amazing people. Recovery is real, it happens to all of us  & how I appreciate the joy it has brought to my life

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.

Check out our sale!

It ‘s your last opportunity this week to purchase training packs , DVDs & books at greatly reduced prices sale ends on 15^th March. Details here.

The last round of Setting up and Running Hearing Voices Groups training went well, the meetings in Swansea and Bangor, Wales were well attended & thanks to sponsorship from a Welsh benefactor a further 2 workshops will be held in Wales in June on the 29th and 30th, we will also be running a workshop in York on the 1st July.

The latest Recovery Champions 5 day course we ran in Stroud, Gloucestershire in February was a resounding success. Everyone loved the venue, the food was superb & the course received very favourable feedback, what was special was that we had French, Danish & Dutch representatives which helped give the course an extra European dimension. We have set dates for the next Recovery Champions course in Stroud for March21st to 25^th 2011. Put the date in your diary now, information will be up on the website soon, we may also put on an autumn course 2010, unfortumately the Stroud venue was full, so any suggestions for a venue or place in the UK let us know.

We are running the Working with Voices & Voice Dialogue course in Stroud Sept 6^th to 10^th again information will be up on the website soon.

Ron & I will both be in Australia for next few weeks. Ron until June 3^rd & myself until April 26^th.

Paul Baker & Ron will be doing a short tour in Canada & the USA on Working with Voices & Setting up Hearing Voices Groups in November, if you would like a workshop in your state please contact us for further information.

Thanks for all your support

Latest news

World Hearing Voices Congress & Intervoice meeting 2011

This years INTERVOICE meeting and World Hearing Voices Congress will take place at Center Parcs In Sherwood Forest, Nottingham, England on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of November 2010, More details available soon. It is advisable to reserve places ASAP as demand is already high. If you have a Facebook account you can indicate your interest in attending by visiting the INTERVOICE Facebook page here or email admin@intervoiceonline.org 

Regards

Karen Taylor & Ron Coleman

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.

I’ve had a busy few weeks ...

I’ve had a busy few weeks, For those of you that have met me you will know that I am passionate about singing & would love to be an accomplished jazz singer. My journey came one step nearer a couple of weekends ago when I took part in a special weekend workshop in Edinburgh, which was my Christmas present from Ron. The weekend was with singer Sophie Bancroft her partner on double bass Tom Lynne & pianist Paul Harrison, fantastic musicians, a brilliant singing tutor & only 4 students. It was a wonderful weekend I learnt so much and to sing with some of the best Scottish musicians was very emotional –thanks Ron for believing in me.

I then travelled on down to Gloucestershire to see my family before starting a three day course on recovery at the lighthouse in Welshpool.  I had 14 staff on the course, they were really enthusiastic and keen to learn, it was good to see how the place is progressing & has had a few discharges already.

I then drove back up to Scotland, picked up my son Liam & caught the boat back to the island, Ron had been in charge of the kids & 17 pigs. Interestingly he now calls the pigs his! Kids all in one piece & house surprisingly tidy, is Ron becoming house- husband material/a farmer????

Next we flew off island leaving Liam with pigs & Kids, stopped for morning in Glasgow to run a session with students at Glasgow Caledonian then back to the airport to fly on to Gatwick then to Venice arriving 11pm straight to hotel, was upgraded to suite with 2 free gin & tonics, got a sleep then straight on train to Trieste for conference.

Trieste was great to catch up with old friends - John Jenkins, Alan Rosen , Roberto Mezzini , Marcello Maccario  & many others but we were a little disappointed with the conference. Ron gave a really good keynote on the first morning, the conference was to celebrate Basaglia the great revolutionary of psychiatric care in Italy, he spent most of his time in Trieste closing down the hospital before his untimely death. Trieste has been held as world class example of good mental health practice, this has been good in many ways but think can also be a problem.

Ron challenged everyone to keep the revolution permanent. Closing the hospitals down was only the first step, what we need to achieve is full citizenship for all, with choice & ownership

The conference was meant to be a debating shop but unfortunately we didn’t see much debate. But what was good was the amount of people from different parts of the world, Brazil, Australia, USA, Finland just a few of the countries represented. Nicholas Rose gave an interesting keynote, at one point he put up a slide on anti psychotic consumption most countries were around the same level, but Finland was way above the others, we spoke to a couple of Finnish delegates who were keen to get hold of the slide to take back to Finland so they could ask why there was such a difference.

I was part of a workshop with  Alain Topor , he is a psychologist from Sweden & has done some really good research into recovery. It felt pretty amazing to share a platform with him, as he is one of the people I quote when training.

We left the conference with a day to go  with a long day of travel ahead of us, Liam was great though, he hadn't been looking forward to coming up as he finds the island too isolating. But he really enjoyed the challenge of looking after the pigs, including the 2 big pigs escaping, & multiple escapes by the weaners & found his time went by really quickly.. I think he now understands better why we moved to Lewis.

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Ron Coleman and Karen Taylor have an international reputation as speakers and authors. They are the directors of ‘Working to Recovery Limited’ an innovative international consultancy, training and publishing company with a cutting edge approach to supporting and improving mental health provision.