When Kieran Brookes joined Norwich University of the Arts as Associate Director of Student Support three years ago, the institution's approach to case management was, by his own description, chaotic. A mix of emails, spreadsheets, and shared drives meant sensitive student information sat across unsecured, unauditable systems — and staff had no consistent way to manage or record their work.
"There wasn't really one cohesive way to bring all of that information together," Kieran explained at Symplicity's UK Advocate & Access User Group Meeting. "It was very risky, not auditable, and quite variable in how different staff approached student cases."
NUA went live with Advocate in August 2023 and is now in its third full academic year on the platform. The university — a small, specialist creative arts institution of around 3,000 students — uses all three Advocate modules: Care for student support workflows covering disability, mental health, wellbeing, student finance, and accommodation; the Title IX module for misconduct and bullying and harassment cases; and the incident reporting module, which they've mapped to academic support processes like extenuating circumstances, appeals, and complaints.
The shift to a single system has been transformative. Staff now follow a consistent workflow, cases have a full audit trail of documents, notes, and decisions, and students have a clear, simple point of entry for raising concerns. Custom reporting means the team can quickly surface data for leadership, whether that's the volume of cases by category or a rapid response to a freedom of information request.
"The impact has been quite profound, quite quickly," Kieran said.
In the last academic year alone, NUA logged 1,593 Care cases and 1,466 Academic Support cases through the system — numbers that reflect not just student need, but a deliberate decision to use Advocate to capture even time-limited queries and interactions. Kieran's reasoning is straightforward: if it takes staff time or requires coordination with another team, it goes in the system, because managing workload and maintaining oversight matters.
The system's risk flagging capability has also become central to how the team works. A Students of Concern list, reviewed regularly by the mental health and safeguarding manager, ensures the right students are getting attention at the right time. And like UWE Bristol, NUA has found that case data is starting to reveal patterns — spikes in particular categories at particular times of year — that can inform proactive intervention.
Looking ahead, NUA has its sights on Symplicity Access. With 38% of students identifying as disabled — placing the university in the top ten nationally — the current process for managing reasonable adjustments is still largely manual. Kieran's goal is to use Access to record adjustment decisions directly in the system, link them to the timetable, and give academic staff an easy, reliable way to know exactly what each student in their classroom needs.
"It's kind of just solving another manual problem that we have," he said. "We want to make it as easy as possible for academic staff to actually deliver those adjustments."
For a small team managing a high volume and complexity of cases, that focus on reducing friction — for staff and students alike — has been at the heart of NUA's approach from the start.
In the last academic year alone, NUA logged 1,593 Care cases and 1,466 Academic Support cases through the system — numbers that reflect not just student need, but a deliberate decision to use Advocate to capture even time-limited queries and interactions. Kieran's reasoning is straightforward: if it takes staff time or requires coordination with another team, it goes in the system, because managing workload and maintaining oversight matters.
The system's risk flagging capability has also become central to how the team works. A Students of Concern list, reviewed regularly by the mental health and safeguarding manager, ensures the right students are getting attention at the right time. And like UWE Bristol, NUA has found that case data is starting to reveal patterns — spikes in particular categories at particular times of year — that can inform proactive intervention.
Looking ahead, NUA has its sights on Symplicity Access. With 38% of students identifying as disabled — placing the university in the top ten nationally — the current process for managing reasonable adjustments is still largely manual. Kieran's goal is to use Access to record adjustment decisions directly in the system, link them to the timetable, and give academic staff an easy, reliable way to know exactly what each student in their classroom needs.
"It's kind of just solving another manual problem that we have," he said. "We want to make it as easy as possible for academic staff to actually deliver those adjustments."
For a small team managing a high volume and complexity of cases, that focus on reducing friction — for staff and students alike — has been at the heart of NUA's approach from the start.
Norwich University uses Symplicity Advocate tosuccessfully manage the most critical student concerns including: student conduct, wellbeing, complaints, support and academic misconduct.
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