Session Outline

Personal academic tutors are often involved in discussions with students regarding their mental health challenges (McFarland, 2016). Providing support as a personal academic tutor can negatively affect staff well-being (Kinman and Wray, 2014). In addition, resilience may be low in personal academic tutors due to burdensome workloads affecting these student staff interactions (Luck, 2010).

In this interactive session delivered via Menti interactive tool. The objectives of the session are to 1) Establish what stress and protective factors personal tutors experience in their role that contribute to their well-being and 2) to co-create effective strategies to develop recommendations for good practice to support both the personal tutor as an individual and also through wider higher educational support. The session will follow the following structure:

Presentation (10 minutes)

We will first present current evidence on mental health and well-being in personal tutors in a UK setting, considering the challenges of the role and present case studies from practice.

Discussion (20 minutes)

The session will include the following discussions within the group:

1. What are the main stress factors that affect your well-being as a personal tutor?

2. What protective or supporting factors have you experienced when facing these stressors?

Activity (10 minutes):

What solutions could be implemented to better support well-being in personal tutors when undertaking this role (e.g., mental health first aider training)?

Summary and recommendations (10 minutes):

We will end by presenting practices developed with our roles as Personal tutor leads including; weekly drop in sessions, signposting, and coaching approaches and co-create with delegates three further recommendations for good practice based on the discussion activity.