Who should make the call

Familiarity beats seniority, every time.

A contact from somebody the student recognises produces a substantially better response than one from a service they have never dealt with. The teacher, the tutor or the coordinator who has met them has a relationship, however slight, and disclosure follows relationships rather than roles.

This argues for teaching staff being the first contact and for the specialist services being where they refer to, which is the reverse of most designs, where an alert generates a referral to a central function that then contacts a stranger.

The obstacle is workload and confidence. Teaching staff are not trained for these conversations, are reasonably worried about being out of their depth, and are already fully occupied. Addressing that requires a short and specific preparation: how to ask, what not to promise, and exactly where to hand over.

The handover point is the part that most needs to be clear. Teaching staff need to know that their job is to notice, ask and refer, and that nothing further is expected of them, which is what makes the conversation safe to have.

It is also worth telling staff what happened afterwards, in general terms. A teacher who refers somebody and hears nothing concludes the referral achieved nothing, and stops referring.