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The project will use a collaborative approach to supporting student mental health focussing on students engaged in placement based learning. It brings together a partnership of the University of Wolverhampton, University of Wolverhampton Students Union and the Black Country Partnership Mental Health NHS Trust – Recovery College to develop, test and deliver an innovative online suite of tools to support students to manage their own mental health. Co-creation will be at the heart of the project, and students will be engaged throughout the life of the project, from concept, development, testing and evaluation. It will take in to account intersectional considerations based on the profile of the students in the target group in order to tailor provision. Beyond the project, the tool will be adapted and rolled out to other courses and made available to other providers, to be a sustainable resource at the University of Wolverhampton and the wider sector.
The project will work with students to co-develop and deliver a suite of online tools that students can access to support their mental health (mh), in their own time and on their own terms. We will use our existing Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) to house this initiative, which will ensure students have easy access to a familiar tool. “What if” events will be held to determine the focus of the tools to be developed, based on student need, and a year-long student placement will be funded via the project to develop what is agreed. Student co-production sessions and focus groups will ensure the content is relevant and tailored. To ensure engagement, students will be compensated for their time with vouchers. The nature of the collaboration derives from an underpinning desire to achieve full co-production and co creation. This will be achieved, from first better understanding the nature of the mh difficulties students in the pilot groups at the University of Wolverhampton (UoW) experience, and inviting them to imagine and co create solutions and interventions that would best assist them. The partnership brings together the UoW, NHS Trust and crucially, the students themselves, to discuss and develop ways to support student mh in a supportive and inclusive way, therefore supporting the connectivity between health agencies and higher education. The Black Country NHS MH Trust Recovery College (NHSRC) brings experience of genuine co-production, and the partnership will use this experience to learn and ensure this philosophy is maintained throughout the project and beyond. The NHSRC’s role will be to train UoW staff and student representatives in the philosophy and underpinnings of genuine co-production. They will support the “What if” exploration events, and support the sense making of the experiences and ideas shared. They will attend the quarterly progress meetings and co-production activities as the online content is developed. Our student’s union (SU) partner will enable us to galvanise student voice so that we can best hear it with the view to understand it better, and view them as equal stakeholders in the courses they engage in and the space we share. They will ensure that the project begins and remains relevant, engaging and useful to the pilot student groups, as well as providing a wider student perspective. The role of the SU will be attend and support the “What if” events and attend the quarterly progress meetings. They will support the co-production sessions during the online content development, be involved in feedback and refinement, and dissemination activities. The project will deliver a whole-provider approach to supporting mh outcomes by complementing existing initiatives and activities supporting student mh. UoW’s student support and wellbeing (SSW) team will support at all stages of the project. Course leads and faculty staff, who have direct teaching and learning, curriculum design and placement allocation for the pilot groups will be engaged, and our Vice Chancellor and Deputy Vice Chancellor will support and promote the project ensuring the sustainability of the outputs and learning.
The Project Aims
A core aim is to create a space for dialogue with our students, in which preconceived ways of seeing, hearing and viewing mh difficulties, can be better understood, to enable the design and development of practical tools to support them. To establish a truly inclusive environment, our understanding of student’s distress needs to be considered within the context in which they study. Step Change chaired by Prof. Steve West (2017) acknowledges the need to adopt a whole-population approach to student mental health, and asks universities to reconfigure themselves as health-promoting and supportive environments. A key principle of our approach is to conceive preventative intervention and practical co-created resources for self-development, based on the issues that students require more support to navigate. It is hoped this will have a positive impact on their self-worth and confidence, sense of belonging and their place and potential, and offers a sign post for evaluation.
This is project is not with the view to duplicate, or even replace the need for and offer of face to face based intervention if it is needed, more so to enhance the menu of choice for students, and for those who prefer self-help.