Education, citizenship, and co-production: insights from a Western Australian Recovery College

Recovery Colleges (RCs) are increasingly recognised as innovative models to support recovery-oriented mental health care, however research in the Australian context remains limited. While most RCs are positioned within the mental health system, the WA Recovery College (WARC) is a community-based education model. This study explored how diverse WA stakeholders experience and understand an Australian RC that is perceived as having a distinctive educational approach to recovery and wellbeing. Semi-structured interviews (n=7) were conducted with WARC stakeholders, including staff, students, and partners. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Two superordinate themes were constructed. First, transformative education reframed recovery as a pathway to citizenship supported by a non-clinical learning environment that foregrounded worldviews and power. Second, co-production as practice and negotiation revealed that centring lived experience constituted a deliberate strategy for protecting marginalised expertise. The Integrity Framework was a key mechanism for operationalising power sharing and navigating WARC’s liminal positioning between mental health systems and the community. Participants viewed WARC as a distinctive RC model that conceptualises recovery through the lens of social citizenship, enabled by education and co-production practices that deliberately surface and unsettle power. By theorising recovery-oriented education as a mechanism for developing citizenship capacity, this study extends existing RC literature and offers a framework that may resonate with policy and funding agendas focused on participation and social determinants of health. The Integrity Framework provides practical guidance for embedding power-sharing in community based mental health initiatives.