Student Agreement

1. The services available from the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team include:

• Assessment and collaborative support plan development
• 1:1 short-term mental health support (up to 6 sessions per academic year)
• Psycho-educational workshops
• Signposting to self-help resources
• Referral to internal and/or external services
• Group work – which may be therapeutic or skills-based group work

We aim to offer you the service(s) most appropriate to your individual needs. Most of our services are appointment based and we are unable to offer crisis or emergency support. If you are currently in crisis please see our need help now page

2. The mental health and wellbeing practitioners in our team are qualified and accredited, by a professional body which is appropriate to their qualification. These professional bodies might include the Nursing & Midwifery Council (NMC), the Health & Care Professions Council (HCPC), Social Work England, the British Psychological Society (BPS), British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP), or other similar body.

3. It is a requirement of professional bodies that practitioners receive supervision. Supervision involves the practitioner talking to someone within their profession about their work. This may involve talking anonymously about the work they have been doing with you. Practitioners also discuss their work with other members of the team, such as at team meetings.

4. If you are receiving support from the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team, we may, in some circumstances, be able to provide you with a letter to support a claim for extenuating circumstances. We can only provide this where – in the opinion of the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team practitioner(s) you have been working with – your academic performance in University assessments will have been adversely affected, during a specified time period, by your mental health or emotional difficulties and we had contact with during that period. (We cannot provide retrospective evidence) . To request a letter of support for an extenuating circumstances claim, email MHWenquiries@wlv.ac.uk and the relevant practitioner(s) will to respond to your request.

5. We do not typically provide detailed or individualised letters of support for extenuating circumstances or a funding claim. Instead, you are advised to contact your GP/doctor, who may be able to assist.

6. To access the services of the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team, you will need to complete our online registration form

7. The information you provide on this form will be electronically stored.  Access to this information is strictly limited to those who ‘need to know’ for the effective running of the service or for the purpose of safeguarding/managing significant risk (risk to yourself or others).

8. The Mental Health & Wellbeing Team complies with relevant data protection legislation (the General Data Protection Regulation 2018 and the Data Protection Act 1998) in relation to how we request, process store and retain information that you provide. Some of the information you provide to us will be classed as ‘personal data’ and/or ‘special category data’ under this legislation.

9. Any ‘special category data’ or information you provide in the registration form, or when talking with us, will only be routinely accessible by staff within the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team and managers responsible for the service. Other information (for example, your name, contact details, and your student number) may be accessed by our administrator, to enable them to arrange appointments for you, and contact you about these appointments.

10. The Mental Health & Wellbeing Team may be required to produce reports, using the data held by the team. These reports contain anonymised statistics to inform the department of Student Support and Wellbeing and the University about the work the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team is doing. The team may also cross-refer some of your personal data (for example, your student ID number) with data held elsewhere by the University (for example, in the University’s student records system) to produce anonymised statistics and reports about the usage and impact of our services.

11. The information you provide is kept for seven years after your last appointment, and then destroyed. All contact with our team is subject to University Regulations.

12.  The Mental Health & Wellbeing Team is part of the Student Support & Wellbeing (SSW) service, and therefore SSW’s privacy statement also governs our work and the services we provide. To consult SSW’s privacy statement, ask a member of staff for a copy or visit our website: www.wlv.ac.uk/current-students/student-support/student-support-and-wellbeing-ssw/privacy-statement/

13. What you tell us remains confidential within our team, however there are rare exceptional circumstances when confidentiality needs to be extended; in other words, when we need to share information with others, within and/or outside the University.

14. These exceptions would only be made for the purpose of compliance with the law and in line with the exemptions provided under data protection legislation and/or in order to ensure compliance with the University’s policies, including our safeguarding policy. These exceptions might include situations in which a person’s life is in danger (yours or someone else’s), or where we have a duty to report e.g. potential terrorism or radicalisation, forced marriage, FGM, modern slavery, or issues affecting the safe practice of those on professional training courses. This list is not exhaustive. In any of these rare situations, wherever possible, someone from the team will discuss this with you.

15. You can request access to the information that we hold about your appointments and interactions with the team. Please email your request to MHWenquiries@wlv.ac.uk marking your email for the attention of the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team Manager.

16. If you wish to retain a copy of these notes, you will need to make a subject access request by following the procedure set out on the University’s website at: www.wlv.ac.uk/about-us/governance/legal-information/corporate-compliance/data-protection/

17. If you want to contact the team at any stage, or if you need to cancel or re-arrange an appointment, contact us by emailing MHWenquiries@wlv.ac.uk  If you need to cancel or re-arrange an appointment, it is important that you let us know as soon as possible so that we can offer that appointment to someone else.

18. If you do not attend an appointment, or you cancel an appointment with less than 24 hours’ notice, the session that you miss is likely to count as one of your allocated sessions. If you persistently fail to attend appointments, or if you do not reply to repeated attempts to contact you about an appointment, your support from the team may be paused or ended, in which case we would contact you to explain the situation and what it means in terms of your support.

19. According to The Equality Act 2010, a person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on [their] ability to carry out normal day-to-day 'activities'. If you consider that your mental health issue meets the definition of a ‘disability' as set out in the Equality Act 2010, please let us know, and complete the  Self-Declaration Form (SDF) to register with the disability and inclusion team.

Disabled Students’ Allowance

You may be eligible to receive additional support known as the Disabled Students' Allowance (DSA).

Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) is support to cover the study-related costs you have because of a mental health problem, long-term illness or any other disability; it can be on its own or in addition to any student finance you get. The type of support and how much you get depends on your individual needs - not your household income, but you will not need to pay it back.

DSA funding is available for eligible students and often covers the costs of specialist equipment, Non-Medical Helpers (NMH) such as a study skills tutor or a specialist mental health mentor and other disability-related costs associated with studying. 

Please check out the Government website for further details on eligibility and guidance of how to apply and any evidence you may require. The Disability and Inclusion team may also be able to help with your application- (disability-inclusion@wlv.ac.uk)

Informal procedure

20. If you have any feedback on the services provided by the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team, the best person for you to speak with in the first instance is the practitioner you have been meeting with. In most cases, this will be the quickest way to enable us to address your comment or concern.

Formal procedure

21. If you are not able to discuss a concern with your practitioner or if the matter remains unresolved, or If you are unhappy with any aspect of the service you have received from the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team and wish to make a formal complaint, you can do this by emailing your complaint to MHWenquiries@wlv.ac.uk, marking your email for the attention of the Mental Health & Wellbeing Team Manager. If you do not wish to contact the Wellbeing & Mental Health Team Manager, you may contact our Administrator to request the contact details for an alternative senior manager.

22. If your complaint relates to a potential breach of the data protection legislation and/or the University’s Data Protection Policy, consult the Data Protection policy at www.wlv.ac.uk/about-us/governance/legal-information/corporate-compliance/data-protection/ and follow the complaints procedure set out within it.

Complaints to the relevant professional body

23. If you wish to make a formal complaint about a practitioner in addition to the above procedure, you can make a formal complaint to the relevant professional body. Details can be obtained from our Administrator. Some professional bodies may require that you have raised the matter with our team first before taking the complaint to them.

Feedback (service evaluations)

24. We will send feedback surveys periodically, there is no obligation for you to complete/ return these- however, we always welcome and value student feedback to help us improve the service. These surveys are anonymised and treated confidentially. We would be grateful if you could complete any surveys you receive, since your feedback helps us to review and enhance our services.