A catch up with our Campus Liaison Officer

So this is now my second blog which seems to be a better way for me to let everyone know about the work that I’m doing within the community. For those who missed my first one, I’ll tell you a little about what I do.

So what do I do? Well I work within Ayrshire College in the role of Campus Liaison Officer (CLO) – a role I have now been in since May 2016 and I'm still just as passionate about it now as I was when I first started, and I’ll go on to explain why.

I cover all campuses of Ayrshire College, these include the main campuses at Ayr, Kilwinning and Kilmarnock, and also the smaller satellite campuses which include Cumnock, Irvine and Nethermains. These include around 900 staff and 12,000 students.

I travel a lot in my role to try to make sure I am visible at all campuses, especially for key events or campaign weeks and also just so that students know who I am and feel comfortable speaking with me.

I try not to be at more than one campus per day to maximise my time there, but sometimes I can be on two or even three depending on the needs of the students and staff.

Ayrshire College already has some fantastic strong working relations with partner agencies and my role is very much welcomed, supported and in demand across the campuses, in fact I’ve never had such a busy or rewarding job!

The work I carry out across the campuses is primarily a ‘prevention and intervention’ role and the main part of this means that I try to promote positive choices through education in the form of interactive workshops to students. I refresh my workshops every year and this year I’m currently offering 16 different workshops on all different Police related subjects, including subjects like Domestic Abuse, Drugs, Alcohol and the Law, Hate Crime, and Aggression, Conflict and De-escalation.

This year the College asked me to deliver my ‘Social media and Cyberbullying’ workshop as a mandatory workshop to all students so I’ve been kept really busy with this. This is due to the popularity in previous years of this workshop but also because the majority of the advice and issues that I deal with within college tend to fall under this umbrella. The rest of the workshops are requested by staff for their student groups.

I also work closely with the local Community Policing teams, our local officers still engage with the individual campuses across Ayrshire to help deal with any incidents or enquiries which may occur. My role as Campus Liaison Officer means I link in with them, and in turn provide any advice, support and reassurance, assist with enquiries where possible and carry out crime prevention measures on campus.

So what's been happening over the past 3 months?

The CLO supported operational officers with 17 operational enquiries due to student knowledge gained from workshop delivery.

The CLO provides ‘student interventions’ these can include mediation between students within college as well as challenging inappropriate behaviour and encouraging a more positive course of action. This quarter I carried out 16 student interventions across all campuses.

The CLO also provided 30 cases of advice to students (including drop-ins and arranged appointments).

The CLO provided 71 cases of advice to staff, (the majority of these to do with how best to deal with student issues).

The CLO provided 15 appointments to staff on a range of issues, (the majority being safeguarding students and promoting positive behaviour).

I’ve added a couple of photos of one of the supported education groups who are in the Ayr Campus. I have delivered a few workshops to them this quarter, they are brilliant fun and always love to get involved and love trying on my uniform.

I always really enjoy the run-up to the Festive Break on campus as it’s so busy with tons of campaigns and other events going on throughout the campuses. The week beginning the 5 November marked ‘Alcohol Awareness week’, which is a pretty big campaign week within college. This is organised by the Alcohol and Drug CLO, Anne Kennedy, and I always help her as much as I can with this. This year I designed a workshop on Alcohol and The Law which I delivered over the course of this week, across all campuses to various classes. I also had a stand in all the campuses to educate students and staff on the dangers and risks of drink driving.

Every year on the run-up to the festive period I run a campaign on Personal Safety, called ‘Student Safety Week’. This took place the week beginning the 26 November. This is a huge event which I organise and run, and I generally have to start planning this late September as soon as the College starts back. I get as many police departments as I can involved in this week, as well as our partners and everyone is brilliant at making time to help out at such a busy time of year. Police departments involved this year included Road Policing, Counter Terrorism and Safer Communities. They all provided some brilliant workshops to students over this week. Partner workshops included Tobacco Awareness, Breathing Space, Road Safety, Fire Safety Community Safety and Alcohol Units and Staying Safe.

Partners also provided stalls over the week at each campus promoting their works and providing advice and freebies to staff and students. Over the 3 days on offer over 20 workshops were delivered to over 200 students. I was so grateful to all that helped me out with this campaign, it was a real success.

My Up and Coming Events for next quarter (subject to change):

So that’s it from me.

Hopefully this gives you a bit more of an insight into the work that goes on within your community ‘behind the scenes’. I’ll keep you posted.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter – PoliceLiaison_AyrshireCollege (@liaison_police)

I keep everyone updated on what I’m up to on a weekly basis.

PC Kimberley Bradford CLO