Personal Academic Tutors are not expected to provide counselling or other specialist advice. That is outside your professional remit and would not be in the best interests of you or your students. Instead, you just need to be aware of what services are provided by the university and to understand how and when to signpost students to these. This is also part of the remit of Student Support & Guidance Tutors. There is some advice on specialist referrals in the Guidance for Tutors.
The university provides a variety of services and resources to support students’ physical and mental health. Rather than give separate links which may be subject to change during the year, here is the address of the main Wellbeing site https://www.brighton.ac.uk/brighton-students/your-student-life/my-wellbeing/index.aspx
From this main Wellbeing page you and your students can access up to date information and contacts covering the following areas:
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Day to day support:
- Student Support & Guidance Tutors
- Faith
- Self-help resources
- Health Services
- Finance-related issues
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Focused support:
- Disability & Dyslexia
- Childcare
- LGBTQ+ support
- Pregnancy & Parenthood
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Extra Support:
- Counselling
- Violence and abuse support
- Remote childcare support
Signs of safety & cause for concern
The signs of safety model for assessing risk is available to assist tutors to assess concerns regarding a tutees well-being. Tutors’ concerns can also be mapped onto the signs of safety retention chart, in order to assess the likelihood of retention issues.
Tutors with concerns about a tutee can consult the Cause for Concern infographic in order to find the appropriate service.
Please also be aware of the Student Online Disclosure Form – this can be used by students to submit a disclosure about an incident(s) of harassment, discrimination, violence or abuse. Information about the different types of incident you can disclose can be found on our student disclosure webpage.
Where appropriate you may also find it helpful to share with students these short self-help guides produced by the Wellbeing Team
