Passed: May 2024  (20th)

What is the current problem, and how does it affect students?

Many societies have introduced welfare or wellbeing roles into their society committees; it has been generally positive and encouraged for societies to incorporate a wellbeing element into their leadership structure. However, through conversations with students who hold these roles, it became apparent that these students felt under supported and overburdened, with some members of their societies treating them as a therapist, and committee leaders not truly knowing how to support their members. 

This year, I have started an initiative called the Society Wellbeing Network (SWN), with an aim to train, inform and support particularly welfare roles on society committees. The Network involved two training sessions, one focussed on how to access general  mental health and wellbeing advice and resources on campus, and the other focussed on Safety in LUU, particularly on nights out. I also acted as an Admin on a WhatsApp chat with society welfare roles who opted in, and used the chat to direct them to resources, conduct polls, notify them of wellbeing-related events coming up, and more. Not only did this create a culture of students feeling their feedback mattered and they could always reach out for help, but it was a simple way of informing them about resources and impacting my work. 

One student said: 

‘after being voted for as the first well-being officer for LUBS with no handover I felt a bit lost in the role if I’m completely honest! Without your training, community group chat, and amazing resource sharing sparking me with such inspiration I don’t think I would have done half the job I have.’ 

This policy is a rewording and resubmission and rewording of the expired policy ‘LUU should provide learning opportunities for committees that empower members to access wellbeing services across LUU and the University’, which was submitted three years ago. It is still an ongoing issue, and I believe LUU needs to commit to embedding a training and support programme, facilitated by a collaboration of the Activities, Advice, and Wellbeing & Partnerships Teams, to ensure students adopting welfare roles feel properly supported. 

What is your proposed change? How will it benefit students?

I propose that the change continues, and is ongoing. I have some suggestions on what I would like to see going forward, based on my experience creating and leading on this project this year. 

Suggestions: 

• A dedicated weekly drop-in hour within the Advice service for welfare roles and other committee roles 

• An online directory or videos of resources which will constitute as training, and in-person training if there is enough demand for it 

• In-person socials and events for the students in the group, to allow for them to network, provide peer support for one another, speak to LUU Advice, speak to the Wellbeing and Activities Officers, etc.

• In-person consent and active bystander training - SASHA and University’s Harrassment and Misconduct Team

• Activities Exec consulting and feeding back on how the development of the Network is impacting the societies and students they represent 

• Welfare societies should have an active role in the development of the program. For instance, if SSAFE society thought it important to include suicide awareness training in the online resources accessible to all societies, LUU should work with them to implement this.

• A consistent commitment to checking-in with the students adopting welfare roles and seeing if they need more from LUU - whether that be a gap in training, support, etc. 

This change would hopefully benefit all students. LUU has over 350+ societies, and if each society has an elected or nominated person who can act as signposts, support will reach more and more students.