Mental Health & Wellbeing
Adult Learning
Mental Health and Wellbeing
We offer a space to explore new ways to improve your wellbeing and gain valuable tools to help you navigate your daily life. Our courses help you to understand the effects of nutrition on your wellbeing, manage anxiety, learn techniques on mindful thinking, and will guide you on your journey of personal development. Our expert tutors will be there with you every step of the way for guidance and support.
• Introduction to Mental Health
• Blues Buster
• Positive Habits for Wellbeing
• Managing Anxiety
• Menopause Wellbeing Awareness
Our course offer is regularly refreshed to stay current and serve the needs of residents. Please look out for new titles that will always be published first on our website.
• Step Towards Confidence
• Neurodiversity and Inclusion
• Confident Conversations
• Returning to Work After a Break
• Procrastination and Time Management
• And Many More!
About Us
ACL Essex is the largest provider of adult education in the county. We’re at the heart of our communities across Essex making a difference to residents and businesses, so everyone has the chance to make a difference for themselves, those around them, and the places that they live in.
Sign up to our newsletterwww.aclessex.com/newsletter
Stay connected
Keep up to date with the latest information, news and events: lifelong.learning@essex.gov.uk aclessex.com/contact-us
Social Prescribing
Funded courses to support recovery
There are many things that affect our health and wellbeing. People may visit their GP because they may be feeling stressed about their work, money, or because they are lonely and isolated. But these problems cannot be fixed by medicine, or doctors, alone. That’s where social prescribing comes in.
Social prescribing connects people to practical and emotional community support and activities, through social prescribing link workers, who are based in GP practices and take referrals from all local agencies.
Who Can We Help?
It can especially help people who:
• have one or more long-term condition
• need support with their mental health
• are lonely or isolated
• have complex social needs which affect their wellbeing
For more information, please visit: aclessex.com/social-prescribing
2-Week Introductory Courses
Courses take place in a virtual classroom or in centre with group teaching facilitated by two qualified tutors. Our tutors have professional and lived experience, and knowledge of mental health. The courses are fully funded with no fee payment required by learners.
Introduction to Mental Health
An introduction to the concept of mental wellbeing and the value of keeping well, looking at what it means to have a recovery from mental illhealth and how that journey can be started and achieved.
Introduction To Building Resilience
An introduction to strategies and tools to help you develop your self-resilience, identifying what is resilience and the benefits of practicing resilience in our day to day interactions.
Managing overwhelm
Identify lifestyle factors that impact your daily life and cause overwhelm. Gain time management and prioritising strategies for dealing with overwhelm and explore the value of creating daily routines in your own life and how this can make a positive difference.
Positive Habits for Wellbeing
Develop an effective approach to building and maintaining positive habits to support and improve your wellbeing. Explore strategies to understand the mind and body relationship of stress whilst developing and maintaining healthy routines.
Stress Awareness
An introduction to awareness of stress, looking at the signs of stress, and sharing some practical approaches to managing them.
Step Towards Confidence
An introduction to strategies towards helping you improve your selfconfidence. You will explore strategies and techniques to improve your self-confidence whilst developing your self-awareness, assertiveness, negotiation and personal skills.
Managing Anxiety
An introduction to self-help strategies to help you manage anxiety with practical tools and tips to apply in everyday life. Helpful for anyone who wishes to manage their anxiety and take back control over their mental wellbeing.
Explore the stigma often suffered by men in relation to mental health, defining common disorders such as anxiety and depression and how this relates to the mind/body relationship. The course will enable you to identify and put into practice a Wellbeing Toolkit, as you discover the five ways to wellbeing and many other strategies to help cope with mental health conditions.
Blues Buster
Combat feelings of sadness and low mood through practical strategies and activities. This course focuses on promoting mental wellbeing and resilience. By the end of this course you will have a toolkit of strategies to Mental Health in a Man’s World
help manage and overcome feelings of sadness, fostering a healthier and more positive mental state.
Menopause Wellbeing Awareness
This insightful course is designed for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of the mental health challenges often experienced during menopause. You’ll explore the emotional and psychological impacts of this life stage and discover practical, evidence-based strategies to support mental wellbeing. With a strong focus on self-care, the course empowers you to develop and integrate sustainable habits into your daily routine.
Problem Solving for Success
Build practical problem solving skills that support your mental health and wellbeing. Learn how to identify, analyse, and resolve challenges in both personal and professional settings and discover techniques and strategies, empowering you to navigate life with confidence and resilience.
3+ Week Courses
Building Self Confidence Mental Health Awareness: Digital Skills
Practical advice, strategies and techniques to improve your selfconfidence, an opportunity to develop your self-awareness, assertiveness, negotiation and personal skills.
Speak Easy: Breathing Techniques
Discover how simple breathing techniques can help you manage stress, reduce anxiety, and improve your mental wellbeing. In this practical course, you’ll explore methods like diaphragmatic and box breathing, and learn how to use them in everyday life to feel calmer and more balanced.
Reducing Anxiety And Staying Healthy
Practical advice, strategies and techniques to help you manage and reduce anxiety. Enables you to develop helpful routines, behaviours and thinking styles in staying healthy, recognise barriers to staying healthy and identify realistic solutions or alternatives and discover activities that can be helpful in developing a sense of control and wellbeing.
Discover how digital technology affects your mental health. You’ll learn to spot signs of digital overload, manage screen time, and use online tools to support your wellbeing, helping you build healthier digital habits for a balanced lifestyle.
Self-Care For Resilience
Enables you to boost your resilience and develop a self-care plan that nurtures and supports your wellbeing during these challenging times.
Neurodiversity and Inclusion
Learn how to understand and support neurodiversity in everyday life. You’ll explore conditions like autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, and discover practical ways to create inclusive environments. Through real-life examples and expert insights, you’ll gain the tools to promote acceptance and inclusion at home, at work, and beyond.
Healthy Limits: Setting Boundaries Confident
Build the confidence to set and maintain healthy boundaries in your personal and professional life. You’ll learn how to define your limits, communicate them clearly, and handle pushback, all while supporting your mental wellbeing through respectful, assertive interactions.
Resilient You: Overcoming Challenges
Discover practical ways to boost your resilience and mental wellbeing. You’ll learn how to manage stress, overcome personal barriers, and build a positive mindset, equipping you with the tools to turn challenges into opportunities for growth.
Conversations
Build the confidence to communicate clearly and assertively in any situation. You’ll learn how to express your needs, set boundaries, and handle difficult conversations with respect, helping you foster positive relationships at home and at work.
Mental Health Awareness NCFE Level 1
Gain a clear understanding of mental health and the challenges people face. You’ll explore common conditions, causes, and perceptions, while learning how to support others and access help. This course provides a strong foundation for personal growth or a future role in the mental health sector.
Employability Skills
These courses are delivered live online in a virtual classroom. Courses are delivered by a subject specialist tutor and do not have a learner fee requirement.
Working With Your Intuition
What if there was a part of you that you could access at any time to give you wisdom and guidance through life, from the smallest to the biggest decisions and dilemmas? More than ever, we are challenged to rely increasingly on what feels right for us, our very own intuition. The more we trust that part of our being, the more we can navigate our tumultuous times effectively, and make individual choices that feel empowering to us. This course will guide you through a process to learn to access and use your intuition for a better and smoother experience of everyday life.
Your New Vision In Life or Career
As we continue to live in changeable times, many of us are re-evaluating life, work, priorities and direction. This twopart inspirational workshop will guide you through a process to gain greater clarity and greater sense of control over shaping your new future in a way that is meaningful to you.
What Other Job Could I Do?
Adaptability is a key quality. This includes the ability to think wider in the scope of what alternative employment opportunities you could consider. Delivered by an experienced Life Coach, this course will guide you through a process of identifying your core values, current circumstances, and transferable skills to prepare you for the changing job market and enable you to identify areas and roles of work that could open new doors.
Self-Acceptance And Self-Validation
“It’s not your job to like me...it’s mine!” -Byron Katie. Do you set unrealistically high standards for yourself at work, with your projects or in life generally? Does fear of judgement and self-criticism influence the way you do things, whether at work, at volunteering or in your personal life? Is feeling ‘not good enough’ in some areas of your work or life your default mode? How does that influence your relationship with your boss and co-workers, your social and personal life? Explore the ways we block ourselves from living authentically and learn powerful
tips and strategies on how to begin to embrace and accept all parts of ourselves, even the parts we deem unacceptable for maximum impact in the workplace and more effectiveness in your own development journey.
Stepping Up Your Motivation
This two-part course will provide an opportunity to identify your own blocks to motivation in different aspects of your life, especially when looking for employment opportunities. You will gain techniques and tools for increasing levels of motivation and developing greater focus so that you can move forward with greater confidence and determination.
Self-Leadership Introduction
Unlock your inner leader and take charge of your personal and professional growth. This course helps you build self-leadership skills to manage energy, make values-driven decisions, and overcome barriers. Learn practical strategies to stay focused, think holistically, and lead with authenticity and compassion.
Coaching For Work and Life
In these uncertain times, the one thing we can rely on is our internal self and our truth as guidance to move ourselves forward. This introductory course will give you a range of tools to help you evaluate where you are and gain clarity as to what you want in any area of your life. This course offers a powerful range of coaching tools and techniques to help you access your own solutions and get unstuck.
Emotional Intelligence at Work
Emotional Intelligence (otherwise known as EQ – Emotional Quotient) features very highly on the list of top skills present and future employers are seeking. This course will guide you through the main principles involved in
emotional intelligence and will give you tools and techniques to tap into, learn and activate a range of sub-skills associated with the subject. Developing greater emotional intelligence will help towards making you not only more effective in all you do, but will help to develop a happier experience of being yourself in any situation both at work and in life.
Assertiveness Skills For Work
Situations arise at work where we are often challenged. Do you find it difficult to say no, or have your voice heard? Do you feel overpowered by certain kinds of personalities or feel low in confidence in certain situations? This course will guide you through some practical and powerful tools that you can immediately start practising to raise your own levels of selfempowerment and to communicate more confidently and effectively.
Setting Your Life and Work Intentions
Start the year with clarity and purpose. This course helps you reflect on what matters most, identify areas where you feel stuck, and set meaningful goals for 2026. You’ll leave with a clear action plan, renewed motivation, and practical tools to create positive change in your work and life.
Returning to Work after a Break
Thinking about returning to work after a career break? This course will help you rebuild confidence, explore new opportunities, and prepare for job applications. You’ll gain practical tools and insights to take your next steps with clarity and support.
Procrastination And Time Management
What’s behind your procrastination? Explore why we procrastinate and how it affects our time management in daily life and work. Discover strategies to overcome procrastination and identify tried and tested ways of managing your time more effectively for greater levels of satisfaction, while keeping healthy levels of work life balance.
Intensive Back to Work Programme
This course is designed to boost your confidence and job-readiness with practical skills and personal development. You’ll cover digital job search tools, resilience, time management, interview techniques, and receive careers advice, helping you take clear, confident steps back into work.
How to enrol
Once you have chosen your course/s, you can either enrol on our website or by phone. Alternatively you can visit one of our centres.
aclessex.com/centres
1. Online
Visit www.aclessex.com and create an account. You can then either search for the course title using the search box or browse our website.
Once the course has been selected, you will be asked to fill out an enrolment form (non-qualification) or asked to enrol onto an assessment session (qualification).
2. Phone
Call 0345 603 7635 and you will be put through to a member of our customer service team.
Our phone lines are open Monday to Friday, from 8:30am to 5pm, unless otherwise stated.
Equality and Diversity
ACL welcomes everyone and is committed to fairness and equal chances for all learners. We do not accept any form of discrimination. Our courses are open and inclusive. We encourage people of all ages, backgrounds, races, religions, and sexual orientations to join, and we actively support Equality and Diversity in everything we do.
Safeguarding
We want everyone at ACL to feel safe. We look after the wellbeing of all learners, staff, volunteers, and visitors, especially those who may be more vulnerable. We have clear policies to deal with any concerns, and all staff are trained to help. Learners are also told how to report anything that worries them.
August 2025
Please Note:
It is always our intention to run our courses as advertised, however if demand is low, they may be postponed or cancelled. Alternative options will be offered in these circumstances. Prices are in line with our fees and charges policy. For full information, please visit www.aclessex.com/fees-policy