Academic staff

Head of Dept.
Personal Academic Tutors/Student Advisors
Module tutors
Professional standards

Your role as a Head of Department is a two-fold one, to ensure that your staff have the resourcing and support they need to help their students who have mental health issues and to have a duty of care for the staff you are responsible for.

You can help by ensuring your staff are equipped to manage students with mental health issues. This may involve recommending training, ensuring staff are aware of relevant policies and procedures and showing that you have an understanding of the issues they are encountering in their classrooms – virtual or actual – and the impact this can have.

Teaching staff may be dealing with students with complex issues and circumstances. These students may be quite demanding at times and it can be stressful for staff to handle. Your role is to support and equip them so that they can cope better with the demands placed on them, and to help them to understand the limits of their own responsibility too.

Knowing that staff individually have done the best they can and signposted or referred as necessary is important for everyone’s professional integrity. Similarly, be aware that staff may be finding it hard to cope with certain student situations and give them a space to talk confidentially about issues of concern.

PATs are the people whose role incorporates maintaining regular contact with the student, primarily relating to academic matters, but they also have a pastoral responsibility. This latter part may be largely for signposting and referral to appropriate specialist information and assistance, as appropriate. The role does not require a PAT to know all the answers, but to be aware of the places, people and resources available to support students. The PAT Resources provided by UHI gives some useful overall guidance on the range and limits of PAT support.

As a PAT, you may be the first person to whom the student first discloses any mental health issue. If so, you need to be sensitive to their feelings but encourage them to consider how the institution can help to support them on their studies. You could suggest referral to the Disability Service, explaining that there are things we may be able to do to help them to manage their studies as well as possible.

Your openness and responsiveness can be one of the key factors in encouraging them to go forward and seek help. Acceptance in a non-judgemental and supportive way can be very important in increasing disclosure.

Online students

PATS may need to prepare more carefully for formal student meetings. It may be useful to look at contributions in group discussions and in chat rooms, or the tone and frequency of any contacts. If it differs from the usual student pattern, it could be a signal to dig a little deeper to check if there is any underlying issue. Erratic patterns of communication, as well as too much communication or none at all can all be signs that something is wrong. They can also be signs that people are just busy being students!

If you have a student with a Personal Learning Support Plan, the PAT for that student should notify you of the Support Plan and pass on a copy of the Summary of Support. This should tell you about the issues the student faces in relation to studying. All information should be contextualised to ensure it is relevant to the course of study the person is taking and the issues that they have.

Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland's Colleges

The Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges (The Scottish Government 2012) also define the scope and role of the lecturer in relation to guidance and support. Please note there are many more valuable links in the External links section of this resource. 

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