Student Minds Mental Health Charter
Highlighting the progress of the Support Workstream as part of the university’s commitment to the Student Minds Mental Health Charter
13 March 2025
Kirsty Hutchinson, Student Health and Wellbeing Manager for Welfare and Counselling Services, and Lucy Robinson, Reader in Clinical Psychology highlight the ongoing progress of the Support Workstream as part of the university’s commitment to the Student Minds Mental Health Charter, and how we are using University Mental Health Day 2025 to highlight the importance of student wellbeing.
Who are the Support Workstream?
The Support Workstream comprises a diverse group of colleagues, NUSU representatives and student sabbatical officers, and is a key area within the Student Minds Mental Health Charter framework, ensuring universities provide timely, accessible, and high-quality mental health support to students and colleagues. The group members work centres on building a proactive, responsive, and integrated support system that aligns with best practice in the HE sector, and across four Student Minds Charter themes.
Support Services: Delivering safe, effective and evidence-based mental health support for students and colleagues.
Risk: Developing clear policies and processes to manage and respond to safeguard students and colleagues.
External Partnerships: Strengthening collaborations with external agencies, the NHS and the local community to promote a civic approach to wellbeing.
Information Sharing: Ensuring ethical, transparent, and compliant information sharing processes for students, their families, guardians and statutory services.
Areas of Focus
The Support Workstream is committed to enhancing mental health support at Newcastle by ensuring:
- A Whole Institution Approach: Our diverse membership includes colleagues from all faculties and PS, to ensure reach and impact across the university.
- Student Voice is central: We want to ensure students contribute and collaborate in decision making about support provision.
- Support is Needs-Led: We are committed to ensuring students receive the most appropriate support, in an accessible way. This is reflected in the SHWS website ‘Find Your Support’ and the recent support visual for colleagues on Sharepoint top tasks.
University Mental Health Day 2025: Thursday 13 March
As we continue to promote a university-wide approach to wellbeing, University Mental Health Day 2025 plays an important role in highlighting support and engagement.
How to Get Involved
We encourage students and colleagues to contribute through:
- Meeting a Student Wellbeing Adviser (SWA): build knowledge on the support available to students in each school by attending a drop in – please check your school’s Canvas page for more info.
- Prioritise Your WellbeingThe Colleague Wellbeing Team will be hosting pop-up events, at four locations across campus. Stop by to explore the support available for staff.
- Attending a wellbeing workshop or training session – refresh your learning on a range of matters including stress, mental health awareness and suicide prevention.
- As we strive to implement a university-wide approach to mental health, we encourage all colleagues to join us in this effort, by completing our online Mental Health & Wellbeing Awareness training and connecting with the support workstream to collaborate on ongoing initiatives.
If you’d like to get involved or share your thoughts, please reach out to Kirsty Hutchinson (kirsty.hutchinson@ncl.ac.uk) or Lucy Robinson (lucy.robinson2@ncl.ac.uk).