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Please note the University is closed until Thursday 2nd January 2025 and your disclosure will not be read until the University reopens. A member of staff will respond to your disclosure as soon as possible on our return.

If you have an urgent concern or are in need of immediate support during this period, please contact University Security on 0114 222 4085 or where appropriate 999.

For anyone who has experienced sexual assault or rape, the South Yorkshire Sexual Assault Referral Centre (SARC), Hackenthorpe Lodge is open every day of the year with staff able to provide information and support.

Disclosing with personal details: 
If you have disclosed an incident with your personal details, then a member of the University’s Student Welfare and Wellbeing team will receive your report. 
 
They will ask one of the relevant advisers within their team to contact you via phone or email to invite you to meet with them in person or via GoogleMeet. (If you would prefer to continue to communicate via email/ over the phone please let your advisor know). 
 
If what you are disclosing relates to sexual or relationship violence/harassment then we will ensure that the advisor contacting you is one of our specialist Sexual Violence Liaison Officers (SVLOs). 
 
When you meet with an adviser they will: 
● Talk to you in more detail about the incident that you’re disclosing
● Discuss the support you need or would like to consider and help you to access this. This could include support relating to your physical health, mental health, sexual health (for example access to STI checks and contraceptive advice) 
● Make a referral to external support services, if appropriate. For example, specialist sexual assault or domestic abuse organisations 
● Provide further information about your formal reporting options 
             ○ to the police 
             ○ and/or to the University (if the reported person is a University of Sheffield student or staff member).  The      University has both formal and informal reporting routes, which can be discussed with you.
 
At this initial stage, you do not have to make a formal report to either the Police or the University. We want to ensure that you have as much information as possible to make an informed choice about your reporting options. If you decide that you only want to access support from the University, and do not want to make a report, then you will not be pressured to do so. 
 
There may however be situations where we need to take action despite your wishes; we will always seek your co-operation with this and try to minimise the impact on you, but if we believe there is a risk to you, or to another person/ people, we will take reasonable action to manage the risk and protect the relevant parties. 
 
If your disclosure relates to another student and you decide that you would like the University to consider initiating an investigation, then we will pass your details onto the University’s Student Conduct and Appeals team - who will contact you directly to provide further information. 

If you make a request for the reported behaviour to be addressed by alternate resolutions, rather than a formal investigation, then we will pass your details to the Student Experience, Diversity and Inclusion Team who oversee this process and will contact you directly with further information.
 
Disclosing Anonymously
If you have disclosed anonymously then we will not be able to contact you directly in order to offer support, however, we strongly encourage you to read the support information available on Report + Support. If your disclosure relates to sexual violence/harassment then you may also find the support resources at www.consentcollective.com/sheffield helpful. 
 
If at any point you would like to access further support you can submit a disclosure with your personal details via Report + Support.  
 
 
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There are two ways you can tell us what happened