Sometimes, students may contact you to ask you for advice or guidance.

Your job as a course rep is to signpost students to support they can access, rather than providing that information yourself. 

 

What is Signposting? 

As a course rep, it is not your responsibility to provide one-to-one advice and guidance to a student. However, we all want to help when a student needs something.  That's why signposting is a really useful tool that you can use to point students in the right direction of support, advice and guidance that they might need.

 

How should I Signpost someone to support? 

More often than not, this is just replying to an e-mail or message with the link of where they can find support. 

If you're with someone in person, you could offer to send them a message with some more information, or, if they're in need of a service on campus and you feel comfortable and able, you could take them to the service they're looking for. 

 

Example 1: 

A student from your society texts in the whatsapp group saying they're struggling to meet an essay deadline because of a family bereavement.

You send a reply to the message, and let them know they can access support here: https://www.ucbguild.co.uk/support/healthandwellbeing/bereavement/ and could apply for ECs: https://www.ucbguild.co.uk/support/ecs/.

 

Example 2: 

A student comes to your event and tells you they're frustrated. They're new to UCB, they're not great at refrencing and they are really worried about failing a piece of coursework.

You suggest they could contact CASE and offer to walk over to the Link with them after the event. 

 

Where can I find the information I need? 

On the Guild website, we have lots of information on support services both inside and outisde of UCB.  You can find advice & guidance here: https://www.ucbguild.co.uk/support/ or general information here: https://www.ucbguild.co.uk/infohub/.  Both of these pages have lots of resources and links to organisations/services that students can access. 

 

I'm still not sure, what should I do? 

If you're still unsure what to do, contact the Guild at guildinfo@ucb.ac.uk and we can provide you with some guidance.