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We are committed to supporting and empowering students with timely, unambiguous and appropriate information on mental health and wellbeing resources and support.

We want mental health information and signposting to be a golden thread within all that we do so that positive mental health behaviours are normalised in the daily life of our university community.

To make this a reality we will:

• Ensure signposting to accessible support is effective throughout students’ studies, particularly at known pinch points, transitions and periods of increased pressure and stress for students.
• Prioritise making information on accessing support consistently easy to find and navigate.
• Explore ways to diversify the means of disseminating information creatively and effectively across the University, raising awareness of the types of support available to students.
• Develop a single point of access, virtual and physical, for the different services within Student Support & Wellbeing.
• Extend our training programmes to further equip our staff with the right skills, knowledge and information to signpost and refer effectively.
• In partnership with Undeb Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ, expand our information gathering mechanisms to reach students who don’t normally engage with support services to better understand all students’ current experiences and to help identify emerging trends. This will incorporate a Student Mental Health & Wellbeing barometer exercise and the Students as Consultants model.

We will integrate healthy behaviour and positive mental health and wellbeing promotion within the University’s educational mission and curriculum, encouraging the recognition of mental health as being just as important as physical health.

To make this a reality we will:

• Embed opportunities to learn and develop wellbeing knowledge within our curricula to further enhance our commitment to mentally healthy academic communities.
• Reflect the links between positive mental health, physical activity and sustainability through fostering active environments across the University, seeking opportunities within our built environment to promote and stimulate good health and wellbeing.
• Review how we serve our diverse student body with our varied and open programme of extra curricular activities that provide social opportunities.
• Identify opportunities to enhance provision and promote uptake of physical and sporting activities through Undeb Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ and Canolfan Brailsford.
• Draw on best practice in the sector to review the use of digital resources to support health and wellbeing, identifying any gaps in our provision.
• Strengthen and enhance our mental health and wellbeing training and support for staff, recognising the positive connection between staff wellbeing and the learning and wellbeing of students.

We will work to create communities where our students can thrive and where all members of our community are included, supported, respected and valued.

We want students to feel that they belong and are connected to the University in a meaningful way.

To make this a reality we will:

• Continue to champion equivalence of provision for Welsh speaking students, including through our leadership of the Wales-wide Welsh medium mental health project: myf.cymru.
• Build on the success of projects like our Connect@Ïã¸ÛÁùºÏ²Ê¹ÒÅÆ×ÊÁÏ and Walk & Talk to create new formal and informal opportunities to bring students together (such as the planned Rathbone Wellbeing Garden).
• Work with our academic schools to understand the particular personal and cultural needs of each school’s diverse student groups, so that we can identify and address barriers to access.
• Proactively reduce risks associated with suicide through our Suicide Safer Strategy.
• Offer students, who find themselves supporting the mental health and wellbeing of a friend or housemate, the support and resources to safeguard their own wellbeing.

We want our support systems, processes, and our approach to have a positive impact.

Partnership working with students as the experts in their own experience is part of our evidence-based approach.

To make this a reality we will:

•  Communicate how we monitor quality, use feedback and enhance provision.
• Work with students as partners in shaping mental health and wellbeing support, recognising they are the experts in their own experience, and evaluating the effectiveness of our work together.
• Continue to develop and enhance our use of learner analytics to build responsive support systems for students who are struggling to engage.
• Benchmark our services against national standards, like the CCAPS measure for counselling, wherever possible.
• Ensure the efficacy of our professional partnerships with local health services by identifying and reporting on shared clinical outcomes.

We will empower students to seek appropriate and timely help. This means we will focus on identifying barriers, tackling stigma, and ensuring that staff can support positive help-seeking behaviours amongst students. 

It also means building on what students tell us works and being prepared to change how we do things.

To make this a reality we will:

• Continue to strengthen our links with external stakeholders and providers to improve collaboration and communication and improve our students’ access to externally provided support.
• Ensure prospective students have access to guidance about how they, and any mental health professionals involved in their care, can ease the transition into university.
• Improve service visibility and awareness of our specialists’ expertise by raising the profile of Student Support & Wellbeing staff across the University.
• Provide more detailed protocols, with clear and well communicated routes for escalation, to support staff responding to students in distress.
• Evaluate our current information management systems across the University and identify enhancements for improved case management.