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There is no single definition for recovery. The personal recovery is driven bypeople's lives, subjective experiences of psychotic crisis and challenges the notionof permanent, chronic mental illness. Several types of activities have an impact onrecovery. This paper presents the preliminary results of the twelve hours trainingfocused on the following topics: recovery -- individual experiences, barriers in theprocess of recovery, social and internalised stigma, empowerment, personalstrengths, problem solving, personal recovery plan, life narrative story. Theparticipants found it to be a positive experience: helpful and supportive. They agreedthat talking of their strengths was much useful and made them feel good. In theiropinions' the most important exercise was personal recovery plan which has giventhem the opportunity to establish individual, meaningful life goals, provide themwith hope and self-determination. These results need replication and further work toidentify what were the preconditions for making the training such a valuableexperience and how this could be replicated on a wider basis. [For the complete Volume 12 proceedings, see ED597979.]

It is well recognized that trauma of domestic violence has destructive impact on somatic and mental health--hence quality of life. In Poland today's assistance programs provide a quite wide range of services, including emergency shelter, crisis intervention, support groups and counselling services. While health care providers may be successful at treating the acute effects of domestic violence, these effects are not sufficiently linked to the restoration of victims' wellness and reestablishment of their connections with the community--hence social inclusion. The aim of this paper is to share with academics and mental health practitioners the experience of developing and piloting training programme for women with domestic violence experience. The objective of this descriptive study is to investigate participants' reaction to the intervention "Living better with the experience of domestic violence and mental health difficulties". The training was developed during the DAPHNE III Empowering W? project, and conducted in five countries: Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Poland, and United Kingdom. In Warsaw there were five hours workshops twice a month over sixteen weeks with six subsequent refresher sessions conducted once a month. The participants found it to be a very positive experience: effective and supportive. These results need replication and further work to identify what were the preconditions for making it such a worthwhile experience and how this could be replicated on a wider basis. [For complete volume, see ED567118.]

It is generally held that it has been only recently that domestic violence gained appropriate attention as a major social problem. However several approaches, drawn from different theories are applicable in explaining the origin of this negative phenomenon. It is well recognized that trauma of domestic violence has destructive impact on somatic and mental health as well as on quality of life. Different screening instruments are available to identify women who have been abused but no studies to date have evaluated the effectiveness of screening to reduce violence or to improve women's health. Public education and police and social worker home visits showed that neither intervention affected service-awareness or service-use scores of individuals who experienced abuse. The aim of this paper is to share with educators and mental health workers some ideas how lifelong learning combined with empowering approaches might help women with domestic violence experience increase their knowledge, coping strategies and self management as well as achieve wellness and social inclusion in their everyday lives. [For complete volume, see ED567040.]