What is the Residential Community Team and what will it do?

We are launching a new Residential Community Team (RCT) in September 2022. The service will support first year students as they transition into university life. The RCT will create a safe and supportive environment for students in halls without impacting unduly on their independence. The new approach offers a co-created activities programme based on leisure activities and exploring issues, a more visible team, and an impactful and accessible service for our students.

We are moving away from a volunteer system to enable us to have a clear and consistent approach to supporting every resident. The RCT will instead provide a peer led model with third years and above supporting first years through their transition. Having recently experienced being a first year, they can provide credible and relatable support. This approach is common in the higher education sector.

The RCT is not a professional mental health provision, but a peer led pastoral approach for supporting students leaving home for the first time. The members of the RCT will help build a sense of community and belonging, which has clear links with positive mental health and reduction of feelings of isolation. They will also encourage appropriate behaviours and signpost people to appropriate support should they need it.

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How will the Residential Community Team work?

As part of a significant investment in our residential support, we will have a robust management team available seven days a week to support the peer to peer approach. There will also be on-call support every night for overnight emergencies.

Every member of the new team will receive extensive training to ensure our student’s welfare. We will maintain our good relationships with external agencies for referral and support in emergencies.

• The substantive management team and coordinators will be available between 11am -11pm every day.
• We will recruit the RCAs from third years, fourth years, and Postgraduates. They will be employed and paid for set hours between 5pm-11pm, over seven days. The RCA's will live on-campus and will include international students.
• In addition to the comprehensive service provided during the days and evenings, the RCT will also provide on-call support for overnight emergencies.

Third years, fourth years and Postgraduates interested in applying can find out more on the Residential Community Team web pages.

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Why was the old Residential Life Team model changed?

The existing Residential Life Team (RLT) has been in place for almost 60 years. It has grown during this time and has provided a great foundation for us to build on. It was reviewed in 2021 to examine what we do, and how we do it. As part of this process, we consulted a broad base of our community, including students and current RLT volunteers, Personal Tutors, and the Dean of Students. We also spoke with the Student's Union, and students. To identify best practice, we engaged with other organisations that provide residential services.

The peer to peer approach was a strong theme expressed during the consultation by our students and showing significant success at other universities. The insights from the consultation lead us to develop the new, evidence-informed Residential Community Team.

The new model was approved in late 2021, and we began to talk to affected staff members and volunteers in February 2022. We have met with those affected sent letters and provided drop-in sessions. The members of the RLT have helped a huge number of students over the years. Their incredible support during what can be a difficult time for our first years will have proved invaluable to many. We are, and always will be, grateful to the members of RLT and we will continue to provide support during the transition.