Disclosing with personal details:
If you have disclosed an incident with your personal details, then a member of the Student Support Team or HR Team will receive your report. They will contact you via phone or email to invite you to meet with them in person. (If you would prefer to continue to communicate via email or over the phone then this is also absolutely fine). Our Support Advisors receive extensive training. However, if what you are disclosing relates to sexual violence or relationship abuse then we will ensure that the person contacting you is one of our specially trained advisors.
When you meet with an adviser they will then:
● Talk to you in more detail about the incident that you’re disclosing in complete confidence.
● Discuss the support you need or would like to consider and help you to access this. This could include support relating to your physical health, mental health, sexual health (for example access to STI checks and contraceptive advice)
● Support you in accessing support services if you choose to. For example, specialist sexual assault or domestic abuse organisations
● Provide further information about your reporting options
○ to the Police (we will not report to the Police without your support)
○ and/or to HR (if the reported person is a staff member)
At this initial stage, you do not have to make a formal report. 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 College or specialist support providers, and do not want to make a formal report, then you will not be pressured to do so. There may however be situations where we need to take action despite your wishes if we believe there is a risk to you or to another person or people. We will not refer to the Police without your prior consent. Reasonable action may be taken internally to manage the risk but this will always be discussed with you beforehand.
Social Media
It is very important that you don’t post details of the incident on Social Media. This could jeopardise the college’s ability to provide a fair and impartial review and potentially put you in contravention of College Policy Please consider that the College has a duty to all parties to provide an objective and unbiased review, offering support to all parties involved.
Disclosing Anonymously
You can submit a report to us without providing any contact details. If this is because you are concerned about providing your details, please be assured that personal information is held in the strictest confidence and not shared with anyone without your prior permission. Sharing your contact details means that we can offer you appropriate support, and advise you of your options (for example if you want the issue to be investigated by the RCA).
If you still prefer to report anonymously, please be aware that we cannot normally take forward any issues you report. This is because we cannot verify the information with you or request any further information or clarification, and we cannot contact you to ask permission to raise what you are reporting with those involved.
However, the information you provide can still be helpful. Anonymous data helps us to understand what incidents are occurring, so that we can enhance support for students, and work to prevent incidents across the College.
If you choose to disclose anonymously then we will not be able to contact you directly in order to offer support unless you opt in to our anonymous two-messaging feature. If you would like to speak to someone, or need direct support or guidance, or would like a formal investigation to take place, please choose to report with your contact details or opt-in to our anonymous two-messaging feature.
If at any point you decide that you would like to provide a named report and access further support, you can contact the Student Support Team on student-support@rca.ac.uk who will be more than happy to help.
Anonymous Two-Way Messaging
Report + Support now offers reporters the option to opt into two-way messaging when reporting anonymously.
Two-way messaging allows you to continue to discuss your report with an advisor after you’ve submitted it. During the process of filling in the reporting questions, you’ll be given the option to opt in. This will generate a 16-character code which you must keep a record of to access the report and messaging service in the future. There is no way to recover this code, if you do not save you will not be able to use this service.
We won’t collect any information that may identify you, it’s completely anonymous and entirely up to you if you wish to provide any information that would identify you. Remember that the details of an incident that you share may also identify you as well as any obvious personal information such as your name or email address.
Your data is important to us. We won't collect or store any information that goes against our privacy policy.
Want to see what happens when someone makes a report? Click here for more information.
