Students’ Unions and Student Minds

Student Minds SUs

Student Minds SUs is an improvement programme designed to empower you and your Students Union to become leaders in mental health.

Co-created with 11 partner SUs, the programme supports Students’ Unions to create cultural change and promote positive mental health within their own organisations, their university and wider communities.

Using our Students Union Mental Health Framework, you will identify areas of improvement, work with expert consultants to enhance your approach, learn from good practice as part of our  SU partner network and build the capacity to embed ongoing improvement.

The programme has four stages:

1. Learn
   ​Use our Students’ Union Mental Health Framework to understand what a whole-organisation approach to mental health and wellbeing looks like in Students’ Unions.
2. ​Explore
   Use the framework to explore how your organisation can better work towards a whole-organisation approach to mental health and wellbeing. Student Minds SU Plus partners also have an appraisal visit from the Students Mind team to evaluate their progress and create a tailored improvement plan.
3. Improve
   We provide expert one-to-one support to help organisations continually improve their approach to mental health and wellbeing. The Student Minds SUs network meet regularly and have access to our digital platform to share best practice and peer learning. Student Minds SUs Plus partners also benefit from bespoke in-house support including campaigning, Student Officer wellbeing and running peer support workshops for student groups and societies.
4. Embed
   During one-to-one sessions, we will support partners to reflect on their progress against the framework, embed learning and share examples of good practice with the network.​​

“The Student Minds SUs programme has been fundamental in changing the Union's approach and strategy in supporting student mental health through the flexible in house support streams which provide incredible value for money and impact. The network days attended by staff members have helped to refocus what we do and how we do it and start to think differently about how we support our members. The ability to help shape the programme has also acted as a development opportunity and has ensured the programme is delivering on the needs of the collective Unions in the programme”.
Michael Wigg, CEO at Westminster SU

How can I get involved?
We are now looking for our next cohort of SU partners, starting in July 2020. If you’re interested in becoming a partner, please contact susupport@studentminds.org.uk to receive a partnership pack and arrange a phone call with our team.

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