Mental Health First Aid Training
Dear Heriot-Watt University,
I hope you are well.
I would like to receive information about the number of your full-time employees who have (certification or have attended) mental health first aid training.
I would like to also kindly ask for the total number of students attending your university at the moment.
Yours faithfully,
Louise Lea
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Information Governance Team
Governance and Legal Services
Heriot-Watt University
Edinburgh Campus
Riccarton
Edinburgh EH14 4AS
Dear Heriot-Watt University,
I wanted to follow up on this long overdue request. Could you please share with me the requested information?
Yours faithfully,
Louise Lea
Dear Louise
Thank you for your information request dated the 13^th October 2019. Your
request has been handled under our country’s own legislation: the Freedom
of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. Firstly I should like to apologise
for the delay in providing you with the information which has been caused
by a high volume of casework generated by the various information
governance acts and limited staff resource. We hope this has not
inconvenienced you too much.
All of our staff in the Student Wellbeing Services are trained in Mental
Health First Aid.
All of our SafeGuarding Officers at our Edinburgh Campus and Jean Muir
Student village have been trained in the NHS Mental Health First Responder
Course. Taking into consideration our recent new starts, that means we
currently have 28 officers with that training who are also First Aid
trained to the HSE FAW Standard. We also have 11 officers trained in the
Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (ASIST), and we intend to
have all of our officers trained to that standard too. As our
SafeGuarding Officers are the first responders to every incident on campus
it is imperative that all are trained to support such situations.
Subsequently, we have started a roll out of Mental Health Awareness
Training available to all managers. The first course has been provided to
one school so far with the remaining school’s training being coordinated
currently.
Please see table below detailing the percentages of students currently
attending counselling to enable correct contextualising with regard to
percentage of mental health first aiders.
Academic year Presenting with As a % of students/ Scottish
anxiety/ depression campuses
2013-2014 316 4%
2014-2015 430 5%
2015-2016 526 6%
2016-2017 457 4%
2017-2018 462 4%
2018-2019 456 4%
If you would like to see the exact student numbers these are publically
available on our website.
[1]https://www.hw.ac.uk/services/informatio...
We also thought that the article following an investigation by Radio Forth
(a Scottish Radio station) reporters around mental health support at
Scotland’s universities and how Heriot-Watt University provides the best
wellbeing support:
[2]https://planetradio.co.uk/forth/local/ne...
might be of interest. Additional information regarding the support we
provide our students can be found on our [3]Well-being pages.
Apologies once again for the delay.
Your right to seek review of our decision
If you are not satisfied with our response or our reasoning set-out above,
you have forty working days from today in which to request a review of our
decision. Any request should be put in writing and should be sent to Ann
Jones, Head of Information Governance, at the address detailed at the
bottom of this email. The request should:
(a) detail your request for a review of our decision to be undertaken;
(b) describe the nature of your original request; and
(c) explain the reasons why you are dissatisfied with our response.
If you remain dissatisfied with how your request for information has been
dealt with, you also have the right to apply to the Scottish Information
Commissioner for a decision as to whether we have handled your request
properly.
Information relating to your right to seek review is available from the
Scottish Information Commissioner's web page at:
[4]http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/YourR...
or by contacting the Scottish Information Commissioner's Office at the
following address:
Scottish Information Commissioner,
Kinburn Castle,
Doubledykes Road,
St Andrews,
Fife KY16 9DS
Telephone: 01334 464610
Fax: 01334 464611
E-mail: [5][email address]
Website:
[6]http://www.itspublicknowledge.info/home/...
Contact us
Finally, should you wish to discuss the contents of this email, please do
not hesitate to contact me.
Kind regards
FOISA Team
Information Governance
Cameron Smail Library
Heriot-Watt University
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