If your institution has been invited by our researchers to take part in the project the information below will tell you more about what taking part in the project would involve. For a more detailed overview please see Project Overview Section.

The project team has been contacting Universities and Colleges of Higher Education throughout the United Kingdom in order to identify student deaths which may be included in the project.

A number of HEIs have already agreed to take part and as a result parents and staff have been interviewed about their experiences. Standard letters which have been approved by the Ethics Committee can be provided for universities to send to parents – these can be amended to reflect individual circumstances.

The research team contact staff within the University from student services or counselling services, with the aim of identifying a key contact within the institution with whom the research team can work closely if a student suicide is identified.  We expect that in some HEIs, the student who died will not have received treatment from the counselling service or the counselling service were not involved with the family. In these circumstances, the key contact may come from another department, e.g. from the academic department or chaplaincy.

The identification of a key contact is very important to the project for a number of reasons. The main one is that for ethical reasons the project team are unable to contact families directly. Therefore the key contacts within each university will be asked to contact the next of kin of the student to ask for their permission to have their details passed to the research team. This approach has already been used successfully at a number of HEIs and many families have welcomed the opportunity to talk about their experiences. Relatives are only contacted if the death has taken place after the beginning of May 2000, but relatives will not be contacted until at least six months after the death.

The team will ensure that it will not be possible to identify any individuals or organisations who take part in the research. Any details which could lead to identification will be changed or removed.

The project team plan to carry out a series of Innovative Practice interviews with HEI staff to discuss their policies and procedures for responding to vulnerable students and when dealing with the sudden death of a student.