Reporting a cause for concern

Family, friends, members of the public

The wellbeing of our students is our priority. We recognise that parents, friends and members of the wider community may sometimes notice changes or situations that cause concern.

If you are worried about a student's wellbeing, safety, mental health, attendance or personal circumstances, please do get in touch with us at [email protected]. This inbox is monitored Monday to Friday, 9.00am-5.00pm (this inbox is not monitored during University closure days). A member of our Student Support Services team will then be able to guide you through your concern and do everything possible to ensure a student is supported. 

No concern is too small. If something doesn't feel right, we would like to hear from you so that we can consider whether support may be needed.

Please be aware that we will only be able to share any information with you where students have consented for us to do so. We will be able to talk through our processes and actions we may take to support our students.

If you have an urgent concern for a person's safety, then please call the Emergency Services on 999. 

If you have a concern you would like to report outside of the University standard operating times (Monday to Friday, 9.00am-5.00pm), then you can contact our University Security team. 

University staff 

It is not always easy to recognise a situation where abuse may occur or has taken place. University staff are not expected to be experts at such recognition, only to raise concerns and disclosures they receive.

If the concern is urgent in nature, then the referee must contact their local Designated Safeguarding Officer and hand over the concern to them. It is then the responsibility of the DSO to contact local services and [email protected] who will then be able to take further appropriate action.

In the case of non-urgent concerns, where any member of the University becomes aware of a possible safeguarding or Prevent concern or receives a disclosure or an allegation they should complete a report with the below details and email [email protected] for the attention of the Designated Safeguarding Lead who will coordinate safeguarding actions and flag up any Prevent cases to the Prevent Lead for them to action.

• Date of referral
• Name and contacts details of person referring
• Student name
• Student number
• Does the student have a disclosed disability
• Is the student aware of this referral
• Date of disclosure and made by (student themselves or third party)
• Context in which disclosure/concern was raised e.g. in email, in call, in a form, in person
• Location details of where incident/concern took place (if known)
• Known details of concern/incident at time of referral
• Are you aware of any internal or external support involvement e.g. GP, NHS, Social Services etc
• Detail of actions already taken by the referrer
• Name of DSO you have consulted (if applicable)

Where a non-urgent safeguarding concern is regarding a child or adult at risk who is not a member of the university, the concern should be raised with the organisation they are part of, e.g. their school or care agency/hospital. 

If you have any concern about how to report or are unsure about who your DSO is, then please email [email protected] and you will be provided with relevant support and guidance.