About our ready-to-run training

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The easiest way to book our training for your team:

1. Select a date and time that works for you and your organisation.

2. Pay by debit/credit card, or request an invoice.

3. We'll contact you to agree and confirm your selected delivery time.

 

You will receive the details of your session and a Microsoft Teams link to provide to your attendees, and we'll deliver the session live and online. After the session, you will receive a report of the feedback from your participants and a resource pack to share with those who attended.

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This is a half-day session lasting 3½ hours.

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About this session

If your role involves being a family’s point of contact for your higher education institution following a student death, this session is for you. We focus on the whole process of family liaison - from making the first telephone call to the family through to meeting the family in person and providing the family with longer-term support.

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It is not easy to support a family, on behalf of your university or institution, at what is inevitably an incredibly difficult time for the family. It’s made more difficult by the fact that this kind of family liaison work might not be a part of the role we have been trained to carry out, and it might be something that, thankfully, does not happen frequently enough for us to quickly build up a depth of experience at handling these situations.

This half-day course is designed to make you feel more confident about every aspect of family liaison – from making the first telephone call to the family through to meeting the family in person and providing the family with longer-term support.

The training is interactive and practical, with a focus on key skills that we can take away to use in our respective roles.   The event is also an important chance to ask questions and explore some of the trickier aspects of family liaison.

We have designed this course to complement our broader training course on coordinating actions and providing support following a student death.  You do not have to have attended our broader course before attending this course.  However, colleagues who have already attended our broader course will still benefit from this course on family liaison, given that it explores family liaison much more deeply than we are able to do in the broader course.

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Who is this session for?

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This session is relevant to colleagues whose role involves being a family’s point of contact following a student death.  This can include:

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• Directors and managers of student services teams

• University secretaries, registrars or other senior/executive-level managers who may be asked to be a point of contact for a student’s family

• Student services practitioners – including colleagues from welfare teams, wellbeing teams, mental health teams, international student support teams or other specialist support services

• Senior colleagues in faculties or academic leaders who may be asked to lead on family liaison

• University chaplains

• Accommodation managers who may be involved in family liaison

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While this training is aimed at higher education, colleagues in further education or other similar settings will also find the content very relevant.

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Learning outcomes

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By the end of this event, participants will understand:

• The challenges of the context in which this family liaison work takes place and what a family is needing from us

• Effective ways to manage the initial phone call to the family

• How to manage practicalities associated with face-to-face meetings with a family

• The importance of issues relating to community, faith, identity and ritual in conversations with a family

• Key aspects of longer-term liaison with a family.