On Time to Talk Day, 4 February, we want to update our staff on the work we are doing at Sussex to support the mental health of our staff.

More than 60 people have now joined our Mental Health Staff Forum from across the University, in a variety of roles, academic and professional services. The network involves those who have experience of mental health problems and/or are keen allies for mental health support.

We met last term to consider a long list of potential activities to take us forward, and from a list of possibilities, we collectively agreed that our focus for attention in 2021 will be:

• training for managers on understanding and supporting mental health
• creating a mental health first aiders network
• developing a wellbeing and mental health policy
• mapping provision for staff to that provided for students so we can use this gap analysis to develop an action plan
• working out how to create different kinds of meeting spaces for staff to talk about mental health, learn, support and share experience

We have volunteers from the Forum to join each of these strands of work and will be starting work together shortly.

A huge thank you to everyone who is involved in the network, for their commitment and their willingness to work together to take us forward. Look out for more information as we develop a web page to keep our Sussex community updated and if anyone would like to get involved, please email Assistant Director of HR, Sharon Neal: s.f.neal@sussex.ac.uk

Just a reminder of our wellbeing resources available to staff, which you might find particularly useful as we deal with current challenges of the national lockdown, and the counselling support that is available to staff through Care First.

And please do remember the value of talking to your colleagues – ‘a small conversation about mental health has the power to make a big difference’.