Student wellbeing advice

We understand that confidentiality is especially important, as it enables people to feel they can talk freely about their concerns in a safe environment.

The student wellbeing advisers will not pass on personal information about students (including information on attendance) to anyone outside the service (including academic staff). However, there are very few occasions when we would consider it necessary to break confidentiality.

These are:

• when you have given us your consent to disclose information
• if we believed you were in serious danger of harming yourself or another person
• where we have been given information, which would render us liable to civil or criminal court procedure, should it not be disclosed.

In such situations, we would normally encourage you to disclose the information to the relevant person/agency. If there is no indication that this has happened, or is likely to happen, or if the crisis or danger is sufficiently acute, the student wellbeing adviser may pass on the information directly.

Consent to disclose information will be sought from the student, if possible.

Service record-keeping 

When you contact the service, an electronic record is created. The purpose of this is to record your contact with the service and appointments with your student wellbeing adviser.

This is held securely in electronic form in line with the University’s Records Retention policy.

For more information, please see the University Records Management pages.

Access to records

Under the GDPR rules, you have the right to see records that are kept about you. For information on how to access your record, please see GCU's Data Protection pages.

We publish a newsletter and regularly update our self-help resources. You can access online support through 24/7 facilitated mental health support forum, Togetherall - 24/7 Support.

The student wellbeing advisers are a point of contact for staff and can provide general advice where staff have concerns about a student.

The Wellbeing Service generally encourages self-referrals as this indicates that students are ready to engage in support. There may be occasions when a student would prefer a staff member to make a referral on their behalf. Please ensure you have the student’s permission before sharing a student’s personal information with us. Find more information about supporting students in distress.

Please note that due to the confidential nature of our service, the Wellbeing Service cannot share any information about specific students without the student’s explicit consent. This includes confirmation as to whether a student has engaged with our service.

Proactive engagement 

• Work with staff in the schools to identify issues arising within that area and seek to develop an early intervention response
• Promote wellbeing events, workshops, and resources
• Departments can request well-being-related sessions for students that can be tailored for specific groups/embedded into student timetables
• The wellbeing advisers can also offer sessions for staff to help them to support students, eg, carer awareness sessions. These can be tailored to meet the needs of individual departments.
• The wellbeing advisers can share general information between academic schools and the wider wellbeing team to improve communication between these areas.

GCU’s Student Wellbeing Service now has four student wellbeing advisers, one for each of the three academic schools, and one for care experienced and estranged students:

All advisers can be reached by emailing swa@gcu.ac.uk or by filling out the first appointment form.

GCU’s Student Wellbeing Service has three student wellbeing advisers, one for each of the three academic schools:

All advisers can be reached by emailing swa@gcu.ac.uk or by filling out the first appointment form.