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What happens after I submit a disclosure? (Students)
What is a disclosure?
A disclosure involves an affected person sharing an incident or experience of (for example) bullying, harassment or sexual misconduct. This may be a recent incident, or it may have occurred in the past. The incident may have taken place on campus, online or elsewhere.
You can choose to report what happened anonymously via Report + Support, or you can make a report with your contact details. See the below for a diagram that sets out this process. Process - internalWhat happens after I submit a disclosure?
If you choose to report with your contact details, a dedicated member of the Student Services team will receive your disclosure and a relevant adviser within their team will contact you via phone or email or invite you to talk to them virtually, or in person. If you would prefer to continue to communicate via email/ over the phone then we will respect your request.
When you speak to an adviser, they will then be able to:
Talk to you in more detail about the incident you are disclosing.
Discuss any support you may need and help you to access this.
Make a referral to external support services, if appropriate.
Provide further information about relevant University policies and procedures and your formal reporting options:
To the Police, where appropriate; and / or,
The University (if the reported person is a UWS student or employee).
At this initial stage, you do not have to make a formal report to either the Police (if relevant) or the University. However, there are certain circumstances when the University may need to investigate or share a report (i.e.: with the police or social services) even without your consent. Examples of situations where we may have to share information are detailed in our Duty of Care. We want to ensure that you have as much information as possible to make an informed choice about your reporting options. If you decide that you only want to access support from the University, and do not want to make a formal report, then you will not be pressured to do so.
Confidentiality and process
Information that you share will be treated confidentially and sensitively. There may however be situations where we need to take action despite your wishes as part of our duty of care. We will always seek your cooperation with this and try to minimise the impact on you, but if we believe there is a risk to you, or to someone else, we will take reasonable action to manage the risk and protect the relevant parties. See our Duty of Care and Confidentiality guidance for more information.
Depending on the circumstances of the report you are making, different policies and procedures may apply (e.g. Procedure for Student Discipline). Where possible, concerns are dealt with informally in the first instance.
Reporting anonymously
If you have reported anonymously then we will not be able to contact you directly in order to offer support. However, we encourage you to read the support information available on our support pages.
We will use the anonymised data gathered via anonymous reports only to establish and monitor trends to better inform our decision making and to help us identify whether there are patterns of behaviour that we should address.
If you choose to report anonymously then we would ask that you do not include names or other information that could be used to identify a third party (such as the alleged perpetrator or witnesses).
If at any point you would like to access further support, you can submit a disclosure with your contact details.
