Student Emergency/Next of Kin Contact Statement

Student Emergency/Next of Kin Contact Statement:
Sharing personal information with your Emergency/Next of Kin Contact

1. Providing the RNCM with your Emergency/Next of Kin (ENK) contact details

As part of our approach to support your safety and wellbeing, we require all our students to nominate and provide the College with details of at least one ENK contact as part of the annual registration process. We ask you to provide this information so that it is available in the unlikely event that a situation arises where we consider your health, wellbeing or welfare to be at risk.

You will need to nominate at least one ENK contact but we would encourage you to provide the details of at least two where possible. Whilst it is your choice of whom you nominate, usually your ENK contact will be a parent, family member or guardian. Most importantly, they must be in a position to be able and willing to act on your behalf in the event of a serious incident or emergency where we consider your health, wellbeing or welfare to be at risk.

You should ensure that your ENK contact is;

1. aware that they have been nominated and that their contact details have been given to the College for this purpose;
2. readily contactable – wherever possible, please provide a mobile phone number as well as a landline so that contact can be made quickly;
3. if possible, able to speak English.

Your ENK contact details are held securely on the College’s student record system, in accordance with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation. It is important that you  keep this mandatory information up to date and you can update it at any time by logging into the Student Portal

These details are recorded on the systems as ‘Next of Kin’ and will be used by the College in the following circumstances.

2. Circumstances under which the College may use ENK contact details

We recognise that you are an individual, with an expectation that information about you is held securely and not shared inappropriately. We will always balance these considerations with your personal circumstances before using the details you have provided and sharing information about you with your ENK contact. It is unlikely that during your time as a student we would ever need to get in touch with your ENK contact and share any personal information.  Wherever possible we would try and get your consent first.

Under current data protection legislation, we are permitted to share personal information about you without your consent where we believe that this is necessary to keep you or someone else safe.

We can also share personal information where it is not possible to obtain your consent. We will do this if we consider you have been involved in, or that there is a risk of a serious emergency situation where we believe you or others are not safe.

The following are examples of circumstances in which we might get in touch with your ENK contact and share personal information, but each case is considered on its own merits.

These examples include but are not limited to:

• You are exhibiting behaviour that may pose a serious risk to your safety and wellbeing or that of others.
• You have attended or been admitted to hospital in an emergency.
• You have suffered a serious physical injury, including significant self-harm.
• You cease to engage with your studies and we have been unable to contact you to confirm your safety and wellbeing.
• You have not recently been seen in your accommodation, we have been unable to contact you and you are considered missing.
• You have an ongoing serious illness and you appear to be deteriorating.
• You are experiencing a mental health crisis.
• A third party has reported significant concerns and we are not able to contact you to establish your safety and wellbeing.
• You have been the victim of a serious crime.

In the event that there are concerns about the health, wellbeing or welfare of a student who is under 18 years old, the College is always obliged to contact the student’s parent or guardian.

3. How the College decides to contact an ENK contact

Any decision to get in touch with your ENK contact or to share personal information without your consent would be taken by the Academic Registrar (or nominee, Deputy Registrar), informed by advice from the Vice – Principal (Operations) (or nominee) and we would inform you of this, unless to do so would increase the risk of harm to you or another person.

Whenever we share personal information about a student with their ENK contact, we keep a record of the justification for this decision, the nature of the information shared, with whom, and the time and date of the disclosure.

May 2023