Mental Health Advisor, Staff and Student Training

The Role and Department

The Counselling & Mental Health Service is a multi-disciplinary central specialist service for student and staff mental health and wellbeing provision in the University. It sits within the Student Support and Wellbeing Directorate. The Service provides individual and group interventions, advice for college and departmental staff, complex case-management, and and the development and delivery of psychological wellbeing initiatives. The Service exists to enable students to make the most of the academic and social opportunities that the University affords, and operates within clear ethical and professional guidelines.

The post-holder will be the lead for Mental Health Training across the University, developing, delivering and evaluating Mental Health Training for staff and students as part of delivering against the commitments set out in our Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Student Support Review. The post-holder will be a core member of the Mental Health Advice team, also delivering services to students by providing individual interventions and overseeing a caseload. This is a dual role combining Mental Health Trainer and Mental Health Advisor to ensure that the post holder has a working understanding of mental health need and support structures within the University to inform and give credibility to training content and delivery.

Mental Health Training role (70%):

The post holder will be responsible for designing, delivering and evaluating mental health training for staff, and for students in welfare and leadership roles, and delivering existing, established training sessions. This is a maternity leave cover role, and much of the training content is already created. Training delivery is in-person, online, and via e-learning materials.

Mental Health Advisor role (30%):

Mental Health Advisors play a key role in managing the increasing incidence of student mental health issues, the increasing numbers of students pre- disclosing mental health disabilities and the management of complex mental health risk across the University. Mental Health Advisors are members of the Counselling & Mental Health Service but work closely with colleagues in Disability Support, academic departments and our colleges.

The primary purpose of the role is to ensure assessment and coordination of student support need, linking University and community-based health support. The post holder will provide advice to students to ensure that they obtain the appropriate treatment, support and, where applicable, the necessary reasonable adjustments. The post holder will undertake assessment of students' fitness to study and support needs where there is a concern regarding their mental wellbeing, including fitness to participate in offsite activity such as field trips. The post-holder will initiate and lead or participate in multidisciplinary support meetings.

Mental Health Advisors also offer guidance to all members of University staff on the management of complex mental health need and risks.

We provide independent supervision, and continuing professional development opportunities, for all staff in our Service to ensure compliance with professional registration.

Further information about the role and the responsibilities is at the bottom of this job description.