Combatting student support case overload: A view from the bridge

These days, more than 1 in 4 students will disclose a mental health problem of one type or another to their university - and encouragingly, they are increasingly seeking help and support. However, this means the internal pressure on university support services has never been higher, with many systems collapsing due to caseload overload.” 
 

Lee Rawlinson, Director of Institutional Research at Student Ventures 

As an education professional, it can be challenging to manage a caseload of students while also providing high-quality support. As a direct result of the case overload, studies reveal that students are increasingly turning to academics rather than the university’s dedicated support teams, for help. A detailed report into The Role and Experiences of Academics summarises the inherent risk this trend poses: 

“Gaps in service provision are placing academics in situations that leave them holding substantive risk. Academics must be able to signpost students to a service where they will receive the support they need and where the service will be flexible enough to respond to the needs of different students.” 

The report goes on to highlight that responding to student mental health problems is now an “inevitable part of the academic role”, but that academics believe their roles and responsibilities in relation to mental health: 

• Are ambiguous and lack clarity, leading to weak and uncertain boundaries and increased risk to students, staff and universities 
• Result in workload and time pressures that are invisible to management 
• Leave them feeling unprepared and unsupported due to a lack of necessary structures cultural change and training 
• Have a substantive, negative impact on their own wellbeing. 

The report also reveals that: 

The relationship between academics and Student Services seems, at best, problematic... creating gaps into which students can fall and through which bad practice can arise.” 

And where students fall through the gaps, and feel unsupported, they are at higher risk of dropping out of university – or worse. The key to closing the gaps between departments is facilitating safe information sharing between teams. To do this, HEIs must invest in tools that enable more effective university-wide collaboration while making accurate and complete student data available securely and in real-time to those who need to see it. 

As mental health support requests are just one in a wide range of general support requests, there is a need to give support teams the best possible opportunity to manage increased caseloads, streamline the delivery of targeted support, and optimise support resources. To achieve this, universities are now implementing dedicated, cloud-native, omni-channel solutions, like Tribal’s best of breed Student Support & Wellbeing CRM to: 

1) Implement best practice enquiry and caseload management 

• Allowing all forms of student support to be managed centrally with built-in best practice case management that can handle even the most complex of cases, enables multiple departmental resources to be assigned and managed through to case resolution. 
• Automatically route cases, defined by type, to the appropriate team to deliver services faster and mitigate frustration and confusion. Build standard workflows to process cases more consistently, efficiently, and securely. 
  
  
  

2) Embed and promote clear processes for requesting support 

• Promoting wellbeing throughout the university community will help to put mental health on everyone’s agenda and signpost people to the range of initiatives and support available via the institution. 

• Use email automation, event management, segmentation and notifications to promote capabilities effectively and make sure students know where to go.  
• Provide students with multiple contact channels and an on-demand way to book an appointment and exchange information in a secure and safe environment. 
• Involving parents in the conversation by providing a safe, secure and systemised way to share their concerns or feedback is also increasingly important. 

3) Provide a responsive and engaging self-service 

• Ensuring all your self-service resources are available via multiple channels and can be accessed anytime on any device is the most efficient way to support students’ mental wellbeing and assist them in developing resilience and self-management techniques. 
• Help students find answers to basic questions by leveraging your knowledge base across your institution. 
• Surface relevant content based on context signals so that students find the right information quickly. 
• Provide live, real-time, or automated chat so students can get their questions answered and find appropriate resources quickly. 

4) Facilitate peer support via safe networking 

• Facilitate inclusion, collaboration, and community with a private, university-wide social network designed to enable like-minded students to safely connect with each other. 
• Create a responsive, accessible and engaging student portal and build a community with discussion-based functionality including forums and blogs.