Opt in or opt out of allowing the College to contact your next-of-kin if we have serious concerns about your wellbeing.

When you enrol, you let us know if we could contact your next-of-kin should we have serious concerns about your wellbeing.

The Student Emergency Contact Procedure explains the situations when we would get in contact.

If your next-of-kin changes for any reason, you must inform the College. Contact Student Services on 01964 553113 or email enquiries@bishopburton.ac.uk enquiries@riseholme.ac.uk.

We recognise that students aged over 18 are independent adults.  Therefore, we need their consent to talk to anyone outside of the College about them, including parents and guardians.

That is why we ask students to opt in and give consent for us contact their next-of-kin in situations when we have serious concerns about their welfare.

Under data protection legislation, we may disclose personal information about a student without their consent, only when it is in their vital interests to do so; this means in very serious or life or death situations.

All College services and departments are committed to treating you with dignity and respect which includes handling any information you provide to us sensitively.

All personal information is collected, stored and managed in accordance with the College’s Data Protection Policy and associated guidance.  We comply fully with the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the UK Data Protection Act 2018.  Records will be kept and stored securely and only accessed by relevant staff when required.  Further information can be provided by contacting enquiries@bishopburton.ac.uk or enquiries@riseholme.ac.uk.

We work with professionals outside the College such as MHS mental health teams.  They have their own confidentiality policies.  We only share relevant information with the sole purpose of supporting students and we will ordinarily inform you in advance unless we have significant welfare concerns.

We do not respond to requests for information from parents, guardians or other third parties (unless covered by Data Protection exemption, eg; from the Police).  Such requests will be refused unless students have given explicit permission in advance.

There may be circumstances where the law requires disclosure for the prevention and detection of terrorism or where non-disclosure is likely to prejudice the detection of crime.

All College staff are obliged to report matters such as safeguarding concerns to the relevant senior member of staff responsible, who may be obliged, by law, to report to external bodies such as the Police or Social Services.

At enrolment, students can choose to ‘opt in’ so that we can contact your nominated next-of-kin in the event of a significant concern about your welfare.  This is the Student Emergency Contact Procedure.  Regardless of whether you have opted in, as part of the Student Agreement, we can contact your next-of-kin in the event of an emergency.

If a member of staff takes the view that a student is at risk of harming themselves or others, they are obliged under their duty of care, to override confidentiality.  This may mean that we cannot discuss our intention to share information with you before doing so.