Student Wellbeing Strategy

For the past year, former President Jack O’Neill worked very closely with the University to develop a Student Wellbeing Strategy – ensuring that there is an institutional direction and culture to support students.

This week, it is officially live!

What is it?

The Student Wellbeing Strategy sets out the direction for how Royal Holloway should continuously adapt, not only providing direct support for students but also embedding wellbeing priorities into all aspects of life at Royal Holloway. In order to support students, we should be alleviating unnecessary stress as well as providing necessary support. This strategy is holistic in its approach, outlining the ways in which we can ensure that student wellbeing is at the heart of everything we do at Royal Holloway.

Check out the strategy

Why do we need it?

When applying for university, you are often told that they are the best years of your life. For some, this is true and for others, it isn’t. Either way, it doesn’t mean that your university experience is immune to challenges. Recent years have brought this debate to the forefront of Higher Education, and while not being a replacement for health services, universities have a duty to care for students in ensuring that their wellbeing is looked after.

At Royal Holloway, we pride ourselves on the strong community bonds that we have to support each other and it is time that we set out a plan for how we can achieve this.

Within the Students’ Union, one of our main aims is to look after your wellbeing, and that is why we have been lobbying for the implementation of a wellbeing strategy, and why we will be continuing to monitor the progress and implementation.

Addressing the Covid elephant in the room

Of course, when we developed this strategy over the course of the year, we didn’t expect the scenario that we now find ourselves in. Whilst Covid-19 has presented new challenges, it has similarly accelerated ones that we were facing already.

The next academic year is going to be a time of significant change, and that also presents opportunities for us to make positive change, dismantling historically ineffective systems, and finding innovative ways to support one another. However, we also understand that some larger changes may be tricky. For this reason, the Student Wellbeing Strategy is accompanied by a bridging Covid document – a short preamble that highlights the main areas of focus to ensure that we all support one another as we steer our way through unchartered waters.

The next steps

So, what happens now? Always a good question! We are now working with the University to develop explicit action plans, creating a timeline of necessary actions and expectations so we can achieve the aims set out in the strategy. We are committed to ensuring that this isn’t simply a glossy document that sits pretty on a website, it has to produce meaningful and effective impact.

Talking of glossy documents, the strategy will be designed with some graphics so that it will be easier on the eye and easier to digest the information. We firmly believe that the commitments in the strategy are the most important element, so we wanted to share that with you before anything else.

Lastly, the implementation of this strategy, and therefore the furthering of a wellbeing focus at Royal Holloway, is a responsibility for us all: for the University in actioning it, for us to ensure delivery, and for you to hold us to account on it.