Student Minds Mental Health Charter: Student Leads
Alwin Jose and Ruby Herrington, highlight their progress in supporting the University’s commitment to the Student Minds Mental Health Charter in their role as Student Leads.
14 May 2025
In previous NU Connections, colleagues have shared updates for the Learn and Support Workstreams of the University Mental Health Charter Framework, developed by Student Minds. This framework supports universities to enhance their approach to student and staff mental health by encouraging a holistic, whole-university approach to wellbeing.
How are we contributing to the Mental Health Charter?
As Student Leads, our role is to coordinate and author the independent Student Voice report. In this report, we will outline three strengths and three areas for improvement in line with the University Mental Health Charter Framework.
To inform our submission we have been meeting with service managers, colleagues and students to understand and collect evidence of Newcastle University’s approach to student mental health. So far, we have noticed that awareness of support services must be improved. Our aim is to ensure that the University continues to progress in promoting the mental health and wellbeing of all members of the community.
In addition to wellbeing support, the charter also focuses on academic support. To address this, we are facilitating student consultations on the Student Launchpad Project, which is the transformed model of academic support proposed to meet Objective 3 of the Education for Life Strategy.
Our next steps:
In the upcoming weeks, we will continue gathering evidence and begin writing the student led submission. From our future focus group sessions, we will aim to capture how the University can better inform and engage students so support services are utilised effectively.
Although the scheduled submission date is January 2026, we aim to complete this report during summer before we graduate.
How to get involved?
As we strive to implement a university-wide approach to mental health, we encourage colleagues to prioritise wellbeing by attending wellbeing workshops, completing the online Mental Health & Wellbeing Awareness training and exploring the Student Health and Wellbeing support resources.
If you're interested in contributing to the student-led submission for the Mental Health Charter, please reach out to Kristy Johnson (Kristy.Johnson1@newcastle.ac.uk) who is coordinating the project.