Our Agreement

What you can expect from us

Our role is to support your wellbeing while you are at College, whether that’s an issue affecting your studies, personal problems that you’re experiencing or an injury or condition. We will talk to you about what you’re experiencing and then work with you to consider what you need and what the next steps for support could be.

You can choose how much to tell us about your situation – we will use what you tell us only for the purpose of getting the right support to you for your studies.  Sometimes this might include helping you to identify your own strengths, capabilities and support networks.

Please note that the Student Wellbeing Advisors normally work within office hours (usually Monday - Friday, 9am - 5pm). We are not a crisis service and may not be able to respond urgently to you. If you are experiencing a crisis and need urgent help, please contact emergency services by calling 999.  There's information on our Help in an Emergency or Crisis page. You can find a list of organisations to contact in a mental health crisis on our Suicide Safety page.

How we use the information that you share with us

We keep brief notes about our contact with you. These are kept securely on our database and will be disposed of in line with the RNCM’s retention policy. Student Wellbeing Advisors and the Head of Student Wellbeing and Disability Services have access to view these notes if required (for example, in the case of staff being on leave).

Health & Wellbeing Hub staff may also discuss issues arising from your case for the purpose of ensuring that you are receiving the support you need.

We will not disclose any personal information about you to your tutors or school without your permission.

As part of our Student Engagement Monitoring process, we may be informed by Programme and Academic Services staff if there are concerns about your attendance and attainment on your course. In these instances, we will not disclose any personal information that you have told us about, but we may advise staff if we are / have been in touch with you, or share information related to your attendance or progression. This is to enable us to coordinate care and to ensure that students don’t miss out on support that may be available to them.

We receive confidential supervision for support with our work. Your identity will not be disclosed in supervision.

The RNCM asks us to provide basic statistical information on the number of students we see and the kinds of issues that arise to monitor and assess the effectiveness of our service. No identifiable or personal information is included.

 

Confidentiality

We will treat any information that you share with us confidentially, and we will not usually share that information without your permission. We aim to talk to you and seek agreement first about what information we need to pass on to someone else, however, there are circumstances when we may need to break confidentiality without your agreement:

• If we have significant concerns about your health, wellbeing, behaviour and/or conduct, or their impact on others, we may refer you to the Fitness to Study process. Full details can be found here.
• If we have reason to believe that you or another person is at risk of serious harm or injury, we may share information with relevant RNCM staff and/or external parties for the purpose of providing support.
  • This would usually be sharing information with your GP or Emergency Services or other relevant services to ensure that you or others receive the help that you may need.
  • We may consider contacting the emergency contact that you have provided us. Full details can be found here.
• We will share information about you if we are required to do so by UK law to prevent serious crime.
• If you disclose an allegation of misconduct to us, we may need to share details with relevant RNCM staff to complete a risk assessment. Further details are below.

This will only be done after consultation with and guidance from relevant RNCM staff in line with our policies.

Wherever possible we will tell you when we have shared information about you without your permission.

It’s likely that you will see us around the College – it is your decision whether to greet us or not.

Telling us about a condition or impairment

The College is legally obliged to make reasonable adjustments to meet the needs of disabled students under the Equality Act (2010). Disabled students are encouraged to disclose their disability to enable the provision of reasonable adjustments to meet their individual study-related needs. Data provided by students about their disability is recorded and processed in accordance with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Information will only be shared with the written consent of the student unless there is imminent, serious risk of harm to the student or to someone else, or where the College is required to do so by law.

If you consider yourself to be disabled, we ask your consent to share your agreed learning support and other disability-related needs with College staff via a Personal Learning Plan (PLP). Please note that choosing not to give consent may mean that support/reasonable adjustments cannot be provided.

 

Telling us about sexual misconduct

If you have experienced or witnessed an incident of misconduct within the RNCM community, you can talk to us about any support that you may need (whether you decide to report the incident or not). This may be internal support such as counselling and help with any impact on your studies, or suggestions for external support too.

You may want to speak to us about whether you want to make a formal complaint – we can talk through the process and help you decide what is the right decision for you as well as next steps for any further support. You would not be expected to give very much detail about what has happened or to name any other people involved at this stage. You can find more information about the process for reporting sexual misconduct in this handbook.

If you share the name(s) of the other person(s) involved, then we would need to share that information as well as any details that you have told us about the incident with the Head of Student Services who will then complete a risk assessment. As much as possible, we would respect your wishes for what you want to happen, but there may be instances where we may need to take precautionary action as deemed necessary in the risk assessment.

At the point that you make a formal complaint and/or share details including the name of any other people involved, some of this information will be shared with relevant staff only on a need-to-know basis.

If your report concerns any other RNCM students, then they will also be offered support by RNCM Health & Wellbeing Hub staff. We aim to have different members of staff supporting different students.