Fostering Wellbeing: An open letter to our student community
Fostering Wellbeing: An open letter to our student community
Following a recent article in The Boar, we are writing to reassure you about our ongoing commitment to your wellbeing.
At Warwick we care deeply about student wellbeing and making sure the best possible support is available for anyone in need. We’ve made significant efforts to ensure our students are safe and it’s vital that we encourage everyone to seek support and specialist help when they’re struggling.
Sometimes we can all find ourselves in need of support, and for a wide variety of reasons. Whatever the cause, we have a whole range of support out there for everyone. Professional help is provided via a range of specialist services that can be accessed quickly and confidentially.
This specialist help includes mental health nursing, counselling and psychological therapies, a team of healthcare professionals providing specialised wellbeing support, a trained Residential Community Team (RCT) for students living on campus, and close partnership working with General Practitioners and the National Health Service (NHS).
In addition to this, students can access the 24-hour emergency helpline at any time via the number on the back of every student ID card, written in Red as Emergency 024 7652 2222Link opens in a new window, and our 24-hour Community Safety Helpline 024 7652 2083Link opens in a new window. These numbers go straight through to staff who are trained to help.
Here at Warwick, we have also adopted the Universities UK / Papyrus framework for ‘Suicide Safer Universities’ and implemented the practical steps the charity recommends universities should take, as well as becoming a member organisation of ZSA (The Zero Suicide Alliance) where students and staff can get free suicide awareness training via a specialised University student module, and further specialised modules on autism, suicide, and social isolation.
All these services, alongside your personal and senior tutors in academic departments, come together to provide wellbeing support. Our average wait to see a healthcare professional for an initial consultation is under 14 minutes, even for routine support. In an emergency, please be assured that our response is always immediate.
As a healthcare professional, the Director of Wellbeing can also be reached confidentially at any time if a student has any concerns about the care and support that they’ve received. We will always do our best to effectively safeguard, support, and care for our students. If you are ever struggling, please speak to us at the earliest opportunity.
We know of course that there is always more work to do to improve our services. Please be assured that we grasp every opportunity to improve how effectively we support and care for our students. It’s a commitment we take seriously. However, it is good to see that the majority of our students know about the support Warwick can offer – 90% are aware of the support available to them, and almost 80% of students agree that wellbeing services are easy to use (Student Feedback Survey – June 2024).
In the next month we will also be launching a planned review of personal tutoring across Warwick, recognising the importance of personal tutors in our framework of support for students. This is part of the wider development of our new Education and Student Experience Strategy and is intended to ensure that our academic support model is sustainable for the future. This review is being co-chaired by the Dean of Students and by the SU Vice-President for Welfare and Campaigns and we are working with students and staff from across the University to work to improve personal tutoring.
We encourage all students who have views or personal experience to share, to come forward and make their voices heard when we launch our formal engagement process. We want to hear from everyone who has suggestions for improving personal tutoring to help us to understand how we can continue to improve our approach. In tandem with this process, we are developing a new Student Wellbeing Strategy which will help us to continue to enhance our wellbeing support offer.
Together, we remain committed to continuing to identify ways of improving and strengthening our processes further, which includes working in partnership with or student community and mental health specialists.
Finally, we would urge any student who is struggling, or who has any concerns about a friend or peer, to make use of the multiple sources of support available, whether through their personal tutor, senior tutor, other senior members of staff in their department, the Students’ Union Advice CentreLink opens in a new window, or to contact our Wellbeing and Student Support team via our wellbeing portalLink opens in a new window. They will listen, help you and provide the support you need. Further help and support is also available through our confidential service, Report and SupportLink opens in a new window, as well as through the peer-led Nightline service.Link opens in a new window
Please help us to continue to improve what we do here at Warwick to help make this an even safer community for us all.