ABOUT

ReCoCo is an independent peer-led mental health charity that delivers groups, courses, activities, engagement work, training and research in and around mental health.

We interpret mental health in a broad and inclusive fashion, acknowledging crossovers with drug and alcohol issues, troubled family situations, poverty, learning disability, autism spectrum problems and other compounding issues.

Everything we do is guided, steered and delivered by people with direct lived experience of distress and “complex needs”. That said, we are reluctant talk in terms of complex needs, because when people relate their stories, they aren’t complex, but very understandable, with intersecting factors. The complexity arises with the traditional system’s response to people, and its tendency to deal with problems singly, and in a linear fashion.

ReCoCo works in collaboration with mental health service providers and other organisations that share our aims, in an ‘open source’ and non-proprietary way, to provide a safe space where people can learn from each other and form connections and friendships which aid and sustain their recovery.

Improving people’s human connectedness is at the heart of what we do, as those who’ve experienced mental distress typically experience multiple disadvantages and are marginalized by their problems, by people’s responses to those problems and by the material poverty that usually accompanies severe and enduring mental health problems.