Report + Support 2023/34 Teaching Period 3 Report
Introduction
Aston University gathers reports of harassment, abuse, or other misconduct through the Report + Support platform, which enables us to respond accordingly. Students, staff members, visitors, and members of the public can inform the university of anything they would like us to know about, either anonymously or by sharing their contact details.
Reports are triaged by our Student Life Safeguarding Leads and Human Resources, cases are allocated to appropriate team members, and response actions are taken to support both the reporting and reported parties.
Since the last report, we have successfully added a Safeguarding report feature which is now operational, enabling us to better coordinate collaborative holistic support, document steps taken by all teams, and measure outcomes. This data will demonstrate the numbers and types of safeguarding cases that are managed by Student Life services throughout the academic year, providing greater insight into the work being done to ensure the safety of the Aston community and the effectiveness of our interventions.
The September 2023-August 2024 academic year saw the incoming distribution of reports, in comparison with the previous year, via the Report + Support platform:
Total Reports 2023/24 and 2022/23:
| 2023/24 | 2022/23 | |
|---|---|---|
| Sep | 4 | 0 |
| Oct | 7 | 3 |
| Nov | 11 | 5 |
| Dec | 9 | 0 |
| Jan | 7 | 7 |
| Feb | 15 | 3 |
| Mar | 13 | 5 |
| Apr | 7 | 6 |
| May | 9 | 5 |
| Jun | 2 | 7 |
| Jul | 5 | 3 |
| Aug | 5 | 3 |
Data insights:
Anonymous versus named reports September 2023-August 2024:
| Anonymous | 30 (33.3%) |
|---|---|
| Named | 60 (66.7%) |
Reasons for reporting anonymously
*Please note that people can select more than one reason
| I don't know what to do | 13 (13.8%) |
|---|---|
| I don't want anyone to know what happened | 3 (3.2%) |
| I don't want to get anyone in trouble | 7 (7.4%) |
| I feel embarrassed/ashamed | 8 (8.5%) |
| I feel like they have more authority than me | 9 (9.6%) |
| I'm concerned it might impact my future career/studies | 11 (11.7%) |
| I'm worried about being called a trouble maker | 7 (7.4%) |
| I'm worried about the repercussion for me or others | 16 (17.0%) |
| I'm worried I won't be believed | 9 (9.6%) |
| I've told someone before but it wasn't taken seriously | 7 (7.4%) |
| I've told someone in the past and nothing happened | 5 (5.3%) |
| Not answered | 64 (68.1%) |
| Other | 4 (4.3%) |
| The person didn't want to tell you themselves | 2 (2.1%) |
Incident types September 2023-August 2024:
| A hate crime | 10 |
|---|---|
| An assault | 15 |
| Bullying | 20 |
| Discrimination | 17 |
| Harassment | 40 |
| I'm not sure | 12 |
| Other | 28 |
| Sexual misconduct | 15 |
*some reports indicate more than one category
Case Outcomes
*Cases are usually closed with more than one outcome.
| Closed as anonymous | 24 |
|---|---|
| Informal action (with support) | 5 |
| Referred to formal complaint/grievance or disciplinary (with support) | 4 |
| Support only (external) | 6 |
| Support only (internal) | 28 |
| Duplicate/spam | 3 |
| External support - Police | 4 |
| External support – Emergency Contact/NOK | 1 |
| Internal support - Mental Health & Welfare | 1 |
| No further action | 52 |
| None | 18 |
Action plan
The Student Life Directorate and Human Resources have the following goals for the 2024/25 academic year:
- to officially launch the R+S safeguarding reporting feature through a university-wide communications campaign;
- to more efficaciously use the R+S platform to ensure responses to R+S cases are collaborative, holistic, and effective;
- to better apply R+S data insights to Student Life initiatives, ie. to inform our efforts to tackle harassment, discrimination, abuse, and misconduct and deliver safeguarding interventions with evidence derived from R+S data.