Enquiries or concerns about our students

Information for parents, relatives, friends and guardians

When a student joins us at the University of Manchester they will be starting a new phase in their life that can be both exciting and daunting. We also acknowledge that this can be a difficult time for you too as often it marks an important transition to an independent adult life.

It’s very possible that you'll still be a close point of contact for our student and can therefore be a very important source of information and support, signposting to University services. These pages aim to provide you with information and advice on supporting this new chapter and helping our students to navigate their journey through student life. You will also find specific contact information for enquiries or concerns that are of an urgent nature.

The Student Support website is a great place to start for any queries relating to student life, with topics arranged thematically and alphabetically. You may even want to familiarise yourself with, or bookmark the website so you know what to do if you're approached with an issue.

We've also put together a range of useful information and advice about how students can support their friends/flatmates, particularly if they are concerned about them, and get some support themselves.

What other support is available?

For most enquiries, including all those relating to a student’s course, their academic School Support Office is the best point of contact. Each student is assigned an Academic Advisor or Supervisory team for the duration of their studies. In addition, every academic School also has a Student Support Officer who is a first point of contact for support related queries and will be able to refer to more specialist services if needed.  

For urgent and/or significant concerns about a student’s health or wellbeing which are not specifically related to academic performance, please contact our Advice and Response Team by emailing adviceandresponse@manchester.ac.uk Monday to Friday, 09.00-16.30. The Advice and Response Team will respond usually within two working days but they will triage every enquiry the same day and urgent matters will receive quicker responses.

If you have an urgent concern about one of our students and it's out of office hours, you should contact our University Campus Support and Security team on 0161 306 9966. This team are incredibly experienced and, if necessary, can contact other colleagues or services to support urgent issues.

If a student lives in university Halls of Residence, you can contact our Accommodation Office on 0161 275 2888 Monday to Friday, between 09:00 and 17:00. Outside of normal working hours, Duty Residential Life Advisors are using the numbers listed on our website pages under the Accommodation Advisors section  

Limitations about what information we can share

You may not think of yourself as a third party when you are contacting us with an enquiry or concern about your child, relative or friend, but, as adults, all of our students are entitled to be confident that their personal information is properly handled in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unless we have the person's specific consent to do so, we are unlikely to enter into a detailed discussion about an individual student, unless serious concerns are being raised about their immediate welfare.

However what we will always do is provide general information about the University's services or facilities and our systems for providing support to our students. Any information shared with the University will be passed to the person responsible for taking appropriate action when such concerns are expressed.

As part of the annual registration process, we require all our students to nominate and provide us with details of at least one emergency contact.  We ask for this information so that it is available in the unlikely event that a situation arises where we consider a student's health, wellbeing or welfare to be at risk.  The Student Emergency Contact Statement can be viewed here.