Student Support and Welfare 

You may experience a variety of difficulties and we welcome you to discuss your circumstances with us, however there may be issues that need further involvement from other Central University services:

• Specific queries about your academic work - speak to your personal tutor in the first instance

• Understanding results and feedback - speak to your personal tutor

• Financial advice, help with budgeting - the Student Advice Centre have specialist financial advisors

• Registration issues- email dll@sheffield.ac.uk or speak to the Student Registrations team

• Issues within your university accommodation - speak to Residence Life

• Counselling - we are not a counselling service but we can signpost you to relevant support such as the Student Mental Health, Counselling and Therapies Service

• Specific disability support - speak to DDSS, your disability advisor if you already have one, or the department DLO (Maria Baldam)

• Module choices or changing your degree path - email dll@sheffield.ac.uk, you may also need to discuss things further with a programme director

• Proof of student status or Ucard issues- go to SSiD

Leave of Absence 

In certain circumstances students may take a leave of absence from their studies. If you think that you might need to take a leave of absence, you should contact your Student Support contact or Personal Tutor for further advice. It is important that you understand the full implications for your studies before you take leave of absence. All requests for leave of absence must be discussed with the Programme Director and Student Support Manager.

For further information about taking a leave of absence please check out the following information:

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/leave-of-absence

Withdraw

If you feel you have reached a point where it is best to withdraw from your studies entirely then we will support you in doing this. The most important point is that you talk to us so that we can support you with the leaving process.

For further information about withdrawing please check out the following information:

https://students.sheffield.ac.uk/withdraw-from-university

If you are considering, or have decided to take leave of absence, withdraw entirely or transfer to another University, you will need to know how this will affect your tuition fees. This policy provides essential information on tuition fee refunds: www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/fees/refunds

If you or someone else is at immediate risk or need urgent medical attention (eg following an overdose or if actively suicidal), please call the emergency services (police or ambulance).

Call 999 (off campus)

Call 4444 (on campus)

You can also access emergency physical and mental health care at Sheffield's Accident and Emergency Department (A&E):

Northern General Hospital

Herries Road

Sheffield

S5 7AU

+44 114 243 4343

Northern General Hospital is a large site and difficult to navigate. A taxi should take you to the A&E entrance. If you don't have cash to pay for a taxi, you can use the Safe Taxi Scheme.

For more information on crisis support, visit the University’s Emergency and Crisis Support page.

Notes of meetings, emails or telephone conversations are kept on our personal tutor computer system (PATS) and are accessible to designated academic, administrative and support staff. If you share personal or sensitive information with a member of staff, you can expect that they may share some relevant details with other staff within the department or university on a need-to-know basis to support you in your studies.

Where there is immediate concern of risk to yourself or others, staff are required to take action and may contact other staff within the University or outside agencies (for example emergency services or social care services). Seeking your consent in these situations may not always be possible. However, we will endeavour to discuss this with you.

When you leave DLL to move on to another department, your personal tutorial records will follow you to your new destination and staff in your new department will be able to look back at them. Such records are not recorded on any form of university transcript and are not shared outside of the university.

In the Support and Welfare team, we keep notes about:

• the difficulties you're experiencing

• the support we've offered you

• the support you have already accessed

• plans for your future support

• proposed actions for students and staff following a meeting

You can access your notes, view correspondence and retrieve any self-help materials through the PATS system. 

The University and the department have confidentiality guidelines for staff. 

Please see the University's policy ‘UoS Privacy Notice ’ and our DLL Student Data and Confidentiality Policy June 2023