Mental Health & Wellbeing - Adult Learning

MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING

We offer a space to explore new ways to improve your wellbeing and gain valuable tools to help you navigate your daily life. Our courses help you to understand the effects of nutrition on your wellbeing, manage anxiety, learn techniques on mindful thinking, and will guide you on your journey of personal development. Our expert tutors will be there with you every step of the way for guidance and support.

Our course offer is regularly refreshed to stay current and serve the needs of residents. Please look out for new titles that will always be published first on our website.

For details and to enrol on courses, see website: aclessex.com/wellbeing

For enquiries email lifelong.learning@essex.gov.uk

Social Prescribing Recollect

Funded courses to support recovery

There are many things that affect our health and wellbeing. People may visit their GP because they may be feeling stressed about their work, money, or because they are lonely and isolated. But these problems cannot be fixed by medicine, or doctors, alone. That’s where social prescribing comes in. Social prescribing connects people to practical and emotional community support and activities, through social prescribing link workers, who are based in GP practices and take referrals from all local agencies.

Who Can We Help?

It can especially help people who:

• have one or more long-term condition

• need support with their mental health

• are lonely or isolated

• have complex social needs which affect their wellbeing.

For more information, please visit aclessex.com/ social-prescribing

Research Programme

What is Recollect?

RECOLLECT programme aims to better understand Recovery Colleges in England, this includes ACL Essex. The programme explores how ACL courses may benefit residents by exploring the impact on student outcomes.

What does taking part involve?

Taking part involves completing a set of questionnaires at four different time periods over a year; when you first join the Recovery College, then 4, 8 and 12 months afterwards. You can complete the questionnaires either on paper, online, over the phone, via video call or you can be sent a copy by post.

The questionnaire should take about an hour to complete.

You need to attend at least one of our Mental Health and Recovery Programme courses to be eligible.

How is my participation recognised?

You will receive a £15 voucher for each questionnaire you complete (total £60 for all 4 timepoints).

How do I get involved?

If you have any questions or would like to be involved, please talk to your tutor or contact us

aclessex.com/recollect

Mental Health Recovery Programme

Free 2-week introductory courses

Courses take place in a virtual classroom or in centre with group teaching facilitated by two qualified tutors. Our tutors have professional and lived experience, and knowledge of mental health. The courses are fully funded with no fee payment required by learners. Each session lasts 2.5 hours and courses are offered at different days and times.

Introduction to Mental Health

An introduction to the concept of mental wellbeing and the value of keeping well, looking at what it means to have a recovery from mental illhealth and how that journey can be started and achieved.

Introduction To Building Resilience

An introduction to strategies and tools to help you develop your self-resilience, identifying what is resilience and the benefits of practicing resilience in our day to day interactions.

Goal Setting For Wellbeing

Helps you clarify your goals in any aspect of life, helping you focus and get motivated towards working on a long- or short-term goal of your choice, to enhance your quality of life and gain a sense of achievement.

Positive Habits for Wellbeing

Develop an effective approach to building and maintaining positive habits to support and improve your wellbeing. Explore strategies to understand the mind and body relationship of stress whilst developing and maintaining healthy routines.

Stress Awareness

An introduction to awareness of stress, looking at the signs of stress, and sharing some practical approaches to managing them.

Step Towards Self Confidence

An introduction to strategies towards helping you improve your selfconfidence. You will explore strategies and techniques to improve your selfconfidence whilst developing your selfawareness, assertiveness, negotiation and personal skills.

Managing Anxiety

An introduction to self-help strategies to help you manage anxiety with practical tools and tips to apply in everyday life. Helpful for anyone who wishes to manage their anxiety and take back control over their mental wellbeing.

Managing Change in Life and Work

An understanding of how to maintain emotional wellbeing when the world around us is changing and unpredictable. Learn how to observe and identify your own fears and triggers and ways of managing them for greater levels of emotional wellbeing to help get you through.

Mental Health in a Man’s World

Explore the stigma often suffered by men in relation to mental health, defining common disorders such as

anxiety and depression and how this relates to the mind/body relationship. The course will enable you to identify and put into practice a Wellbeing Toolkit, as you discover the five ways to wellbeing and many other strategies to help cope with mental health conditions.

Managing Sleep For Wellbeing

An introduction to self-help strategies to improve sleep. Sleeping well is important for our mental and physical health and many factors affect quality of sleep. On this course you will find out how to recognise sleep cycles, routines and environmental factors affecting sleep and what you can do to achieve better sleep quality.

six week courses

Building Self Confidence

Practical advice, strategies and techniques to improve your selfconfidence, an opportunity to develop your self-awareness, assertiveness, negotiation and personal skills.

Positive Thinking For Stress Reduction

Practical advice, tips and strategies to help understand the mind and body relationship of stress, recognising cognitive distortions and how to engage positive thinking, develop better boundaries and communication, reducing negative stress and improving wellbeing.

Reducing Anxiety And Staying Healthy

Practical advice, strategies and techniques to help you manage and reduce anxiety. Enables you to develop helpful routines, behaviours and thinking styles in staying healthy, recognise barriers to staying healthy and identify realistic solutions or alternatives and discover activities that can be helpful in developing a sense of control and wellbeing.

Health And Wellbeing

Enables you to identify the components of health & wellbeing; develop and build a positive approach to health and wellbeing using discussion, activities and selfreflection. The course will take place in an online classroom, with group teaching facilitated by two tutors.

Self-Care For Resilience

Enables you to boost your resilience and develop a self-care plan that nurtures and supports your wellbeing during these challenging times.

Wellbeing Provision for Personal Development

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy

These courses are delivered in centre and online. Courses are delivered by a subject specialist tutor and there is a fee element attached to them that includes a concessionary rate for those who are eligible due to their personal circumstances.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Introduction

Duration: 5 weeks

Fee: £63/£31.50

Learn about concepts and techniques in cognitive behavioural therapy and their application in supporting mental health. This course is live online in a virtual classroom in weekly tutored sessions.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Delve Deeper

Duration: 5 weeks

Fee: £63/£31.50

This course is live online, suitable for those learners who have attended the ACL Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Introduction course, and anyone wishing to gain further knowledge of CBT, focussing on how changing our cognition and behaviour can promote healthier self-care, and support mental health.

Nutrition Health Body & Mind

Mini Mindfulness

Location: Online Self Study

Fee: Free

Take a step out of the everyday and into the calming, relaxing world of mindfulness to truly experience the here and now. Regular practice of mindfulness techniques will help reduce feelings of anxiety, stress and low mood in everyday life and lead to increasing productivity and creativity as tensions reduce, allowing you to be more focussed, calm and able to enjoy and truly experience the current moment in time, at any time.

Healthy Habits Mindfulness & Meditation

Duration: 5 weeks

Fee: £65/£32.50

This course explores the benefits of meditation in learning to control/ manage or reduce our habits of negative thinking.

Hatha Yoga

Duration: 8 weeks

Fee: £75.60/£37.80

Enjoy Hatha yoga, a branch of yoga focussing on body alignment and offering slowerpaced guided movement to poses, incorporating breathing techniques, improving balance and overall fitness of cardio and muscle endurance and flexibility.

Healthy Habits Food

Duration: 5 weeks

Fee: £65/£32.50

This course offers an introduction to how nutrition affects body and mind wellbeing, how food affects mood. Discover foods for healing, health and immunity; learn about nutrients, superfoods and how to make good food choices including seasonal and local foods to enjoy a healthy balanced diet to feel and live well. Explore ways to enhance wellbeing through mindful eating and food preparation and review our daily eating habits to move forward on a healthy habit journey.

Simplify your life

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: £32.50/£16.25

This course is live online with an experienced Life Coach. In times of constant change, finding and keeping our balance and peace of mind has been a huge challenge for most of us. This course will guide you through a process of streamlining and simplifying your life to reflect your own current priorities and achieve greater levels of balance and satisfaction. This course will enable you to identify what your own simplified and uplifting life version could look like and gain useful tools to help you move forward in a way that makes sense to you.

Qualifications and Skills for employment Counselling

Our counselling courses offer foundation skills needed to undertake further training to pursue a professional career.

Counselling Skills Introduction

This course must be completed before progressing to the further levels.

This course offers an introduction to: effective listening, counselling theory, ethical considerations, principles and practices in person-centred counselling.

Counselling Level 2

Before enrolling on a Level 2 Counselling Skills course, you are required to complete an ACL Counselling Skills Introduction course and complete a pre-course assessment.

This course leads to CPCAB Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills. The course develops further understanding of person-centred counselling concepts and theories focussing on knowledge and skills needed to use counselling skills to engage in a helping interaction appropriately. Homework is essential throughout the course; you will keep a journal with regular reflection on your own development

and complete a portfolio of written evidence. Assessment for certification includes one formal examination and submission of a portfolio of written evidence. Certification on this course does not qualify you to practice as a Counsellor. You must attend a pre-course assessment and demonstrate good written English skills before enrolment is confirmed. The course involves experiential elements requiring some personal disclosure and associated personal developmental activities and is not suitable for those who are currently in a state of severe emotional difficulty or psychological confusion.

Counselling Level 3

Before enrolling on a Level 3 Counselling Studies course, you must have CPCAB Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills and attend a precourse assessment.

This course leads to CPCAB Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Studies and is suitable for learners preparing for counselling as a long term career path, this course offers a foundation to further study for those who wish to become counsellors. Learners must complete CPCAB Level 2 Counselling Skills Certificate before enrolling on this course. Learning includes

understanding the counselling relationship, empathic understanding, self-awareness in counselling practice, theories of counselling and mental health. Certification on this course does not qualify you to practice as a Counsellor. You must attend a precourse assessment and demonstrate good written English skills before enrolment is confirmed. The course involves experiential elements requiring some personal disclosure and associated personal developmental activities and is not suitable for those who are currently in a state of severe emotional difficulty or psychological confusion.

Career and Employability skills

These courses are delivered live online in a virtual classroom. Courses are delivered by a subject specialist tutor and do not have a learner fee requirement.

Working With Your Intuition

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

What if there was a part of you that you could access at any time to give you wisdom and guidance through life, from the smallest to the biggest decisions and dilemmas? More than ever, we are challenged to rely increasingly on what feels right for us, our very own intuition. The more we trust that part of our being, the more we can navigate our tumultuous times effectively, and make individual choices that feel empowering to us. This course will guide you through a process to learn to access and use your intuition for a better and smoother experience of everyday life.

Your New Vision In Life Or Career

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

As we continue to live in changeable times, many of us are re-evaluating life, work, priorities and direction. This twopart inspirational workshop will guide you through a process to gain greater clarity and greater sense of control over shaping your new future in a way that is meaningful to you.

What Other Job Can I Do?

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

Adaptability is a key quality that is more important than ever during our current times. This includes the ability to think wider in the scope of what alternative employment opportunities you could consider. Delivered by an experienced Life Coach, this course will guide you through a process of identifying your core values, current circumstances, and transferable skills to prepare you for the changing job market and enable you to identify areas and roles of work that could open new doors.

Self-Acceptance And Self-Validation

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

“It’s not your job to like me...it’s mine!” -Byron Katie. Do you set unrealistically high standards for yourself at work, with your projects or in life generally? Does fear of judgement and self-criticism influence the way you do things, whether at work, at volunteering or in your personal life? Is feeling ‘not good enough’ in some areas of your work or life your default mode? How does that influence your relationship with your boss and co-workers, your social and personal life? Explore

the ways we block ourselves from living authentically and learn powerful tips and strategies on how to begin to embrace and accept all parts of ourselves, even the parts we deem unacceptable for maximum impact in the workplace and more effectiveness in your own development journey.

Stepping Up Your Motivation

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

This two-part course will provide an opportunity to identify your own blocks to motivation in different aspects of your life, especially when looking for employment opportunities. You will gain techniques and tools for increasing levels of motivation and developing greater focus so that you can move forward with greater confidence and determination.

Upgrade Yourself

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

It’s not just phones that get upgraded! This two-part course provides you with the opportunity to take a step back and work on improving your selfesteem and self-belief during times of uncertainty and challenge. You will be guided by an expert Life Coach with strategies for making positive changes to your thinking patterns and lifestyle to help you move forward.

Coaching For Work And Life Introduction

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

In these uncertain times, the one thing we can rely on is our internal self and our truth as guidance to move ourselves forward. This introductory course will give you a range of tools to help you evaluate where you are and gain clarity as to what you want in any area of your life. This course offers a powerful range of coaching tools and techniques to help you access your own solutions and get unstuck.

Emotional Intelligence At Work

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

Emotional Intelligence (otherwise known as EQ – Emotional Quotient) features very highly on the list of top skills present and future employers are seeking. This course will guide you through the main principles involved

in emotional intelligence and will give you tools and techniques to tap into, learn and activate a range of sub-skills associated with the subject. Developing greater emotional intelligence will help towards making you not only more effective in all you do, but will help to develop a happier experience of being yourself in any situation both at work and in life.

Assertiveness Skills For Work

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

Situations arise at work where we are often challenged. Do you find it difficult to say no, or have your voice heard? Do you feel overpowered by certain kinds of personalities or feel low in confidence in certain situations? This course will guide you through some practical and powerful tools that you can immediately start practising to raise your own levels of selfempowerment and to communicate more confidently and effectively.

Elevate Your Skills

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

Our ability to adapt to a rapidly changing work environment means that certain skills are becoming more sought after. What can you do to upskill yourself and take your own skills to the next level? This course will take you through the key soft skills for the future including growth mindset, adaptability, active listening, emotional intelligence and resilience in the workplace just to name a few. Designed to help you feel more empowered and ready to embrace new challenges with greater confidence.

Procrastination And Time Management

Duration: 2 weeks

Fee: Free

What’s behind your procrastination? Explore why we procrastinate and how it affects our time management in daily life and work. Discover strategies to overcome procrastination and identify tried and tested ways of managing your time more effectively for greater levels of satisfaction, while keeping healthy levels of work life balance.

How to enrol

Once you have chosen your course/s, you can either enrol on our website, by phone or in our centres. View our website for opening times – aclessex.com/centres

1. Online

Visit www.aclessex.com and create an account. You can then either search for the course title using the search box or browse our website.

Once the course has been selected, you will be asked to fill out an enrolment form (non-qualification) or asked to enrol onto an assessment session (qualification).

2. PHONE

Call 0345 603 7635 and you will be put through to a member of our customer service team. Before calling, please make a note of the course title or course code.

Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday, from 8:30am to 5pm, unless otherwise stated.

aclessex.com/contact-us

lifelong.learning@essex.gov.uk

Equality and Diversity

ACL is committed to fairness and equality of access, opportunity and outcome for all learners and potential learners. We oppose discrimination in any form and have a commitment to making our courses inclusive and available for all. We positively welcome enrolments from everyone, regardless of age, culture, race, religion/belief and sexual orientation, and actively promote Equality and Diversity across all areas of the service.

Safeguarding

We are committed to the safeguarding of all our learners, staff, volunteers and visitors. We are particularly mindful of specific vulnerable groups although we promote the safety and wellbeing of all members of the ACL community. We want you to feel safe and not threatened by the environment or other people and we have policies and procedures in place to deal effectively with any safeguarding concerns raised. We ensure all staff are trained and our learners are advised on reporting concerns.

PLEASE NOTE

It is always our intention to run our courses as advertised, however if demand is low, they may be postponed or cancelled. Alternative options will be offered in these circumstances. Prices are in line with our fees and charges policy.

For full information, please visit www.aclessex.com/fees-policy