About Us
Find out about us
Our Values
We believe that anyone can experience mental health difficulties at any time in their life and it is ok not to be ok.
Recovery means finding ways to live as well as possible, whatever that means for the person and often involves finding hope, new meaning in life and gaining control of how difficulties are managed.
We feel that peer learning and support (from people with similar experiences) can form a vital component of mental health recovery.
We believe in collaboration between people with lived experience of mental health difficulties and mental health professionals where all perspectives are valued equally.
Our Aims
We aim to co-produce a series of educational workshops on recovery and wellbeing topics that will be open to anyone with an interest in learning about mental health.
Our workshops will include input from people with lived experience and mental health professionals to offer people tools and ideas for promoting recovery and wellbeing.
We aim to make these an open, inclusive, non-judgemental space where people can feel safe and comfortable to share and learn together.
We aim to promote a positive view of recovery to enable people to feel empowered and in control of their own wellbeing.
Meet the REG team
Elina Baker (Director)
Elina is a consultant clinical psychologist working for Livewell Southwest, in recovery services. This mean, she works with people who have experiences that get labelled as psychosis and she has been doing this for many years. She helps the people she works with, by exploring different ways of making sense of their experiences and developing different ways of coping with them. She is particularly interested in how trauma can lead to these kinds of difficulties and how compassion can support recovery. She strongly believes that people who have had their own difficulties have an important role to play in supporting the recovery of others. She has worked alongside many people with lived experience of psychosis, to help people with similar experiences, their families and mental health workers learn about recovery. This has included co-writing a book: Living With Psychosis by Elina Baker and Melanie Attwater
Bianca Valenta (Director)
Bianca, is a working mum with 2 young children. She has lived experience of depression, C.F.S and Fibromyalgia, Bianca set up her city centre based coaching service, in 2016 and offers a combination of counselling, coaching, nutritional therapy and neuro-linguistic programming to help people develop a holistic focus for their recovery.Offering 1 – 1 sessions, employee support programs and group workshops – with a focus on the recovery of stress, anxiety, low mood and physical conditions exacerbated by stress and other lifestyle issues such as insomnia.Bianca uses four pillars of wellbeing at the centre of her coaching: Life, Mind, Social Needs & Body.
Emily Lyons (Director)
Emily works in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, educating managers and colleagues on how to adopt more inclusive approaches and to be respectful and appreciative of our differences. Over the past few years Emily has been on her own discovery journey which resulted in being diagnosed with ADHD, and has gained a keen interest in supporting other neurodivergent people to understand themselves and support themselves better. Through running a Neurodiversity Network, she has learned from a range of perspectives about neurodivergent experiences, and has been able to offer advice, guidance and support. She is looking forward to bringing this expertise and experience to REG and helping to increase understanding and acceptance of neurodiversity in Plymouth.
Tiffany Player (Director)
Tiffany is an expert by experience and the founder of D&C Directory. She has lived experience of anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder, and is very passionate about mental health awareness and advocacy. Tiffany's professional background mostly lies in psychology, a field she has been working and supporting people in for over 8 years. As someone who has been both a professional and an individual being referred to services, Tiffany believes very strongly in improving accessibility of mental health services and support for those who need it.
Claire Whiter
Claire is pleased to be working at a time when altered states and realities are being understood in all sorts of different ways.
As a clinical psychologist within an Early Intervention in Psychosis service, she supports people to make sense of their experiences and find what works for their personal recovery.
Claire says "Listening to stories of people who have 'been there' has been more powerful than any academic learning I have undertaken."
Amy Ashton
Info coming soon
Tam Martin Fowles
Tam is an Expert by Experience, and CEO/Founding Director of Hope in the Heart CIC and creator of the AccepTTranscend Model for Transformation. Other hats include transpersonal therapist, mentor, writer, poet, activist, international group facilitator, trainer and Master Facilitator of the UN-endorsed Virtues Project, Also wife, Mum and Nana, and occasional visiting lecturer at a number of universities. She is passionate about social change and my personal experience of mental health crisis and neurodiversity positively informs all areas of her life and work.
Nicky Nurrish
Nicky has set up a CIC Marbles Lost and Found. This is a mental health website, community and support group for anyone touched by mental health issues. The website provides awareness, wellbeing tips and tools, crisis support, local services and more, everything you need to know about mental health and mental health wellbeing in one place.
Yvonne Knight
Yvonne is a working mum and grandmother. She is an Expert by Experience and has personal and professional lived experience in mental health areas which include PTSD, psychosis, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety disorders and sleep problems. Since relocating from Shropshire to Plymouth over five years ago after becoming acutely ill with her mental health, she is building a new life from scratch and now works in a Montessori nursery, with Plymouth REG and is a collaborative songwriter with her boyfriend. Yvonne’s main career, prior to relocating to Plymouth, as a Secondary Music and Creative Arts Educator and Musician, has equipped her with knowledge, skills and understanding of the significant and positive impact of creativity upon mental health recovery. She is passionate about this and through her own journey of recovery explored extensive creativity and expression to heal and process trauma. Yvonne is also interested in restorative justice and neurodiversity.
Si Parnham
Info coming soon
We're Stronger Together
We are working together as we all recognise the power of co-produced knowledge.
We believe that through collectively offering our different forms of expertise, and lived experience, we can provide hope, challenge stigma and support people to move forward from mental health challenges.
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