South London and Maudsley Recovery College

South London and Maudsley Recovery College provide a variety of training courses to people in the area who struggle with their mental health. We spoke with Ursula Bowerman, one of the Peer Recovery Trainers at the college, to find out how accessplanit has helped streamline their operations and boost their positive impact in the community. 

About South London and Maudsley Recovery College

South London and Maudsley Recovery College offer free education to support people in their recovery from mental illness. It is run by the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and funded by the Maudsley Charity, complementing the clinical support offered by the Trust to patients and their families and friends. Staff at the Trust are also able to take part.

They offer recovery and wellbeing courses within the mental health sector across South London including Southwark, Lambeth, Lewisham and Croydon. They work with mental health professionals, health and social care professionals as well as various community partners to create them. The Recovery College is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

They provide a mix of both in-person and online sessions, which are taught collaboratively by someone with expertise by job role and someone with lived experience of mental illness and recovery.

As a Peer Recovery Trainer, this is how Ursula got involved. She has delivered training across all four boroughs, in acute inpatient wards and in the community. She now works for the college full-time and has taken up an admin role, splitting her time between this and training. 

"For the past year, I have been the person training the admin team on how to use various aspects of accessplanit and they just absolutely love it," she said.

The challenge

The Recovery College offers around 300 different courses, with about 80 running per term. They have roughly 500 regular delegates every term, or 1,500 active people booking courses per year. They have a total of 6,710 users registered on their accessplanit platform. 

Without training management software, keeping track of these courses and delegates would be nearly impossible for Ursula and the team. In fact, Ursula said that being without accessplanit now "would be like chopping off an arm"! 

"We just had a paper registration form for people to sign up for our courses. We had an Excel spreadsheet that we were using to keep everyone's details on," she explained about the time before accessplanit. 

To keep delivering their important courses to more people, they had to invest in the right software. 

The accessplanit solution 

“The team go above and beyond."

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College 

Implementation 

accessplanit has a thorough implementation process to ensure our customers are set up for success, including a dedicated Implementation Manager, platform training and data migration. 

Ursula was full of praise for the help that accessplanit provided as the Recovery College transitioned into using the software: "We had on-site training and online training. They were fantastic, it was first-class training. All of our team left feeling much more confident at the end of it."

She mentioned that a new way of operating was a big learning curve, but hands-on implementation has benefitted everyone: "We've had to learn a lot as a team, but it's coming into its own now. It's really embedded."

Support

"I feel confident going to the support team and asking questions about any aspect of the platform and having them answered quickly and seriously. They're so, so helpful. Anyone reading this case study, you'll get to know the support staff and they're great!"

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College 

Ursula was keen to emphasise how much she appreciates the accessplanit team. Our customers have a dedicated Customer Success Manager who truly cares about helping you get the most value from accessplanit. She told me about times when the team had gone out of their way to provide their expert help. 

"The team go above and beyond, really," Ursula said. "It was so helpful when [Customer Success Managers] Jack and Lauren took time out of their day to meet me and look at my project management plan for embedding accessplanit."

In addition, Ursula contacts our Support Team when she needs help. They are available online and over the phone, operating on a ticket system. "It's really useful having the ticketing system because it helps me keep track of where I am, all the different questions I have," Ursula said.

"The support staff for accessplanit will get back to you via email or they will set up a phone call or they will speak to you on Microsoft Teams if it's something that's better seen visually. That's brilliant."

She continued: "Nothing has been more important than having my questions answered quickly as I try and problem solve for lots of different team members. But also not feeling stupid, feeling like I can ask any question and someone's going to help me. There's no such thing as a silly question. I feel confident going to the support team and asking questions about any aspect of the platform and having them answered quickly and seriously." 

"They're so, so helpful. Anyone reading this case study, you'll get to know the support staff and they're great!" 

Photo: The accessplanit team wearing it green for Mental Health Awareness Week

Key features

So, what are the key features of accessplanit that Ursula and the team use? 

"As soon as they've marked the register and sent it off, the certificates go out automatically within five minutes of the class finishing - just with one click of a box. For the trainers, it's super convenient to support with the delivery of their courses."

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College 

Automation

accessplanit's powerful workflow engine automates key tasks which are vital to ensure the smooth running of the Recovery College. Ursula said this has been the most impactful feature for her and her colleagues. 

"We've set up a range of different emails to go out to students in different situations," she explained. "Once the trainers mark somebody as having attended the class, they receive reminder emails for the following sessions. If the trainer marks someone as not attended, they stop getting session reminders and receive a follow-up email to check in and find out why." 

"If they've completed their course, accessplanit autogenerates a certificate to go out to them. And if they cancel they get an automatic cancellation message."

The team can relax knowing the right emails automatically go to the right people at the right time.

Online booking

Through accessplanit, the Recovery College have been able to set up a course booking system on their website, where delegates can browse courses and book a place online. Once they add a course to their basket, they are led through a smooth, secure checkout process hosted by accessplanit but customised with your brand.

"I think it looks great. It looks really sleek and professional," Ursula said.

This has been set up to support their unique processes. "We have to check students' eligibility, so we've set it up so that when they book on a course, they're actually triggering an expression of interest. Then, the admin team go in and finalise their booking."

With a training management system, this task is quick and easy for admins to complete. 

Trainer portal

Trainers at the Recovery College have their own accessplanit portal for viewing their upcoming courses and delegates who are attending. This streamlines their role as they can complete tasks with the click of a button. 

"I've had feedback from the trainers, the thing they really like about accessplanit is that they're able to download a register and a sign-in sheet for their class - one click, boom! Amazing." 

Ursula continued: "As soon as they've marked the register and sent it off, the certificates go out automatically within five minutes of the class finishing - just with one click of a box. For the trainers, it's just super convenient to support with the delivery of their courses."

Custom fields

One of the features that makes accessplanit truly configurable is Custom Fields. It allows you to add custom information that isn't already in the accessplanit platform to suit your training company's unique needs.

South London and Maudsley Recovery College have used this to create a 'special requirements' field. The admin team can input any accessibility needs a student may have and accessplanit will pull the information through on the trainer's registration sheet. 

"We can now communicate that with our trainers much more easily. They can log in a week ahead of their class and check what all their students' access needs are. This really helps us to support individual learning needs," Ursula said. 

"Custom Fields is definitely one of the highlights of using the platform, it's amazing. You can really tailor it to your needs."

Course management

accessplanit's course management software uses course templates that can be bulk-created and edited, and scheduled in advance. This makes the task of managing the wide range of courses that the Recovery College offers far easier for Ursula and the team. 

With our handy calendar tool and dashboards, they can instantly see what courses are upcoming and view or amend their details. 

Resource management

South London and Maudsley Recovery College run their classes in external venues so they need to manage these effectively. With all of the data in one centralised platform, it's simple for staff to assign venues to upcoming courses. 

"Because we use quite a few different community settings, that's been really helpful," Ursula said.

Using a drop-down menu, it's easy for the admin team to specify if the course will be in-person or online and ensure that delegates receive the right joining instructions - either with a joining link or directions to the correct venue. 

Surveys

accessplanit allows you to collect helpful delegate feedback with surveys sent via a workflow as soon as they finish the course. The Recovery College have recently implemented this to evaluate their courses' effectiveness, which helps boost delegate satisfaction and monitor learner progress. With survey functionality built into the platform, there's no need for additional software which incurs extra costs and chaos.

The results

"We're reliant on accessplanit now, so I think it would feel like chopping off an arm if we went backwards! This has been a fantastic step for us."

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College

So what effects have these training management software features had on the Recovery College?

Improved delegate experience

With accessplanit's automation and CRM tools, the Recovery College have set up communication workflows which ensure that delegates get all the information they need in a timely fashion, from the start to the end of their customer journey. Nothing falls through the cracks, and Ursula said that this has improved their delegate's experience.

"The communication that we have with our students is so much better than before," she said. 

Saved time

With powerful workflows and everything they need to organise their training courses in one place, the admin and training teams at South London and Maudsley Recovery College have cut out realms of admin work. By streamlining their training operations, they have saved time (and therefore money, too). 

Increased efficiency

Beyond saving time, having all of the data in one place means that human errors are reduced because there is no need to rekey information between spreadsheets or different software. This results in increased efficiency across the organisation, especially when trainers can access all of the information they need instantly, such as accessibility information. 

"I think we're quite reliant on accessplanit now. It's been a fantastic step for us," Ursula said.

Scalability

With increased business efficiency, and software that can cope with so much data, the potential for growth for South London and Maudsley Recovery College is unlimited. Outdated systems and time constraints don't stifle them, so they have been able to scale.

"We're growing, we've had new staff members, so we're going to be doing a lot of training and supporting new staff members to use accessplanit. So in the future is hopefully more growth," Ursula explained. They can continue to expand their positive impact in their community and support more people in their recovery journey. 

Next steps

"One thing I really like about accessplanit is the product suggestion feature which I use quite a lot. Usually with product suggestions, you can put something in and never hear about it again. But I do feel that accessplanit do listen and sort through them and take action and make improvements."

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College

I asked Ursula what's in the future for South London and Maudsley Recovery College and they have high ambitions.

Learner portal

As well as a trainer portal, accessplanit also supports learner portals, where delegates can view their upcoming bookings, access eLearning material and monitor their own progress. The Recovery College is currently in the process of setting this up with accessplanit's help.

"All of their certificates will be in the same place where they can access them and they will have a diary of their upcoming courses, and all the handouts will be in one place," Ursula explained. "We're hoping to use this to implement individual learning plans too, to help the students with goal setting."

This will further boost efficiency and delegate satisfaction with a dedicated area for them to self-serve.

Reporting 

Ursula anticipates that the powerful reporting tools in accessplanit will become important for her team in the future, when they have been using the platform for longer and have more historical data to analyse. accessplanit has in-depth reporting tools as well as at-a-glance reporting to assist with decision-making and improved insights. 

"It's a long-term plan when we've got those figures to help us with our growth." 

Ursula said that she knows how vast accessplanit is, and is excited to explore what else they can use by attending our platform training events. 

Product improvements

Ursula appreciates that our Product team is always working hard to improve the platform with regular feature updates. She said she is looking forward to learning about future updates and seeing if they can help the Recovery College.

We often make improvements based on suggestions from our customers, and Ursula has experienced this herself.

"One thing I really like about accessplanit is the product suggestion feature which I use quite a lot. Usually with product suggestions, you can put something in and never hear about it again. But I do feel that accessplanit do listen and sort through them and take action and make improvements."

"An example recently would be a button on checkout. I requested that the button was more visible, and it happened. It was a much bigger button. And I was like, that's brilliant!"

“100% I would recommend accessplanit because of the staff, because the team are so supportive and helpful."

Ursula Bowerman | Peer Recovery Trainer at South London and Maudsley Recovery College