Dee Fenton is a Unite member working as a General Manager at Bridport Arts Centre in Dorset. In her spare time Dee also volunteers for the SSAFA, a charity supporting armed forces personal and their families. Dee recently completed a Level 2 course in Mental Health Awareness provided by Tribal Education, one of a range of paper-based and online courses promoted and supported by unionlearn since signing a partnership agreement.

Dee wanted to study Mental Health Awareness because of her involvement working with Wounded, Injured and Sick service leavers with SSAFA. She said;

I hoped it will give me a better understanding of the impact of stress on a person and how they cope with life, which is intricately woven with the stresses of having to leave a career that people thought was for life."

The Tribal way of learning was ideal for Dee as Bridport is in a rural area and the nearest Colleges are some distance away - also working at an Arts Centre can involve evening work that is dependant on the programme - so Tribal’s flexible approach was helpful and the materials good.

Dee said; 

Tribal materials are clear and easy to follow, although not having been in the education system for a long while now, the open book style of learning weirdly felt a bit like cheating. However, everything seems to be sinking in really well and the feedback from each module is really helpful when revising the answers I’ve submitted.

The best thing about the learning experience is... that I still can!  The feedback from the tutor assigned to me feels really personal, when I thought there would just be standard, formulaic marking.  To get positive, useful criticism has grown my confidence greatly, as I was always useless in exams even if I was fine with the subjects.

I’m very grateful for this opportunity.  A lot of courses are completely out of reach financially so to get one that is so comprehensive and also free is actually a bit of a miracle"

Dee feels that signing up to a Tribal course has reignited her interest in learning, and she is now looking at further opportunities as well as aiming to use what she leant to support others.

It has definitely encouraged me to continue learning and I hope to start another course soon after I have finished this one. I hope to be able to train to help people with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) eventually, which I thought was completely out of my reach.

Thank you for making me realise that this is not so!"