CREATE toolkit: consultation response
The Charlie Waller Trust is a mental health charity who provides practical tools for young people, educators, parents and employers to look after their mental health. The toolkit aims to help higher education providers develop an effective evidence based mental health strategy. The toolkit aims to help higher education providers develop an effective evidence based mental health strategy. The toolkit includes six principles: coproduction, risk assessment, evaluation, accessibility, togetherness, and embeddedness. The principles ensure that a provider’s strategy aligns with the needs, experience and expertise of its students, staff, and stakeholders. The toolkit was also designed to complement the Student Mind’s University Mental Health Charter.
We reached out to our members to review the different aspects of the toolkit. The reviewers would like to thank the Charlie Waller Trust for their work and commitment to supporting universities in improving student mental health and wellbeing.
Here’s a short summary of the review.
Purpose and target audience of the toolkit
The toolkit is a practical and accessible guide to help develop an approach to mental health and wellbeing that includes students and staff. Our reviewers felt that the purpose of the toolkit should be more explicitly stated. It could include the benefits for providers of establishing a whole institution strategy for mental health and wellbeing, as this would encourage them to use the toolkit.
It’s unclear whether the toolkit is aimed at providers in the early stages of creating a mental health strategy, or at providers looking to enhance an established approach. If the toolkit’s purpose is to be a starter guide to designing a mental health strategy, this needs to be more explicit in the introduction. Similarly, the intended audience could be clarified by including a short section outlining who should be using the resource.
Designing an accessible mental health strategy
Our reviewers felt that the toolkit would be useful when designing an accessible mental health strategy for students and staff. They particularly liked how it considered the accessibility needs of different groups, such as neurodivergent and disabled students and staff. Diverse student communities need to be considered to ensure the toolkit is fully accessible to everyone. For example, in some cultures mental health is not openly acknowledged or understood. Therefore, the toolkit could address how to mitigate cultural differences to ensure it’s inclusive by considering international students and staff.
A toolkit for the sector
The toolkit assumes that all readers have the same understanding of the terms ‘mental health’, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘mental illness’. The terms should be clearly defined in a terminology list at the start of the document.
As well, the feedback suggested that further defining the CREATE principles would be helpful when providers attempt to complete the exercises included within the toolkit. For example, expanding the definition of ‘coproduction’ would clarify who a provider should consult when designing their mental health strategy. To support providers, it may be useful to include exercises which help them assess their current mental health provision, and whether it already aligns with the toolkit’s principles.
Reviewers believe it’d be useful to include an introduction which outlines the benefits of completing the reflection exercises within the toolkit as including the benefits would better position its value to the sector. Similarly, they think including real-world examples from providers that have successfully implemented the principles in their mental health strategy would demonstrate its practical relevance. If the recommendations we implemented, both the reflective exercises and real-world examples should highlight that a whole university approach to mental health and wellbeing affects both staff and students.
As the CREATE toolkit was designed to complement the Student Minds’ Mental Health Charter, it was suggested that it could include a more detailed section outlining the relationship between the two frameworks. For example, it could be useful to know how they align to one another. This would help providers see the toolkit as complimentary to their work towards the charter, rather than as an additional framework to follow.
The feedback also notes that additional links to sector resources and further reading material would be helpful for providers. The resources could include other frameworks like the Student Minds’ Mental Health Charter, Advance HE’s Education for Mental Health toolkit and best practice case studies from Universities UK and AMOSSHE. A suite of knowledge and practices would further help providers when trying to establish a whole university approach to mental health and wellbeing.
