The information you share with us is held confidentially within Student Services (Inclusive Support and Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Support). Where we feel it would be useful, and/or of benefit to your wellbeing, we will share relevant information about your contact with different teams within Inclusive Support and Student Mental Health and Wellbeing Support. This includes Counselling; Mental Health Advice, Inclusive Support Advice, Tutoring, Mentoring, Student Welfare and Multifaith Chaplaincy. Counselling have additional requirements which are outlined in their disclosure statement. This helps us provide you with a joined-up service and avoids duplication.
Student Services aim to support students in the best possible way while they are studying at Oxford Brookes University. In order to do this, we will sometimes need to disclose relevant information to other professional services, your faculty or others associated with your learning. We will only disclose information about your support requirements in accordance with the overall Student Services Confidentiality and Information Sharing Policy and Privacy Notice. The Inclusive Support Service will ask you for consent, usually by completion of an online form, in order to share relevant information about reasonable adjustments with your faculty or others associated with your learning. We will not reveal anything else about you, your attendance, or discussions in appointment to anyone outside of Student Support unless you give your consent and cannot put an Inclusive Support Plan in place without your consent.
The University will use data about disability to monitor equality, diversity and inclusion and the services it provides to students. This information will also be provided to HESA for research purposes. Where this information is used for research the information published will be made anonymous so that you will not be identified as an individual.
If you are in receipt of non-medical help support (such as Tutoring or Mentoring) funded through Disabled Students’ Allowance, the transfer or sharing of information or documentation relating to your NMH support to the auditors instructed by the Department of Education (DfE) may be required, so that the auditor can audit the our internal processes for dealing with the delivery of NMH support services.
Information shared with us by the Counselling Service under the Student Services Confidentiality and Information Sharing Policy will not be disclosed either within or external to the University.
In very exceptional circumstances, we may take a decision to disclose information without your consent. These circumstances are:
- If we believe that there is a serious risk to your safety or the safety of another person, we may contact University colleagues or external services such as a GP or mental health team. Whenever possible we will discuss this with you and seek your permission to share information, but in some circumstances we may have to proceed without your consent.
- When the member of staff/service could be liable to civil or criminal court procedure if the information is not disclosed, e.g. if you informed us that you were involved in criminal activity, knew about an act of terrorism etc.
Decisions to disclose information without your consent will be authorised by a senior member of staff within Student Services. Any information that is shared would be kept to a minimum, and shared only on a ‘need to know’ basis. A record of the disclosure will be retained as part of your case file which you are entitled to see in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act.
- Oxford Brookes University has a statutory responsibility for making decisions on how my data is processed.
- Oxford Brookes University will process my data for the purposes of providing support (both academic and otherwise), through Student Services.
- Oxford Brookes University may share data where there is a legal, contractual or regulatory requirement to do so, in order to provide better support for your needs or in order to protect you or others from the risk of harm.
- You have a number of rights in relation to our processing of your data and can withdraw your consent for us to share your data at any time.
You may also wish to read the full version of this Privacy Notice.