Developing an emergency contact scheme for student wellbeing.

Henderson, Sarah; Forbes-McKay, Katrina

Abstract

Concerns have grown over wellbeing and mental health issues experienced by university students (Auerbach et al., 2018; HESA, 2022), especially after the COVID-19 lockdown (Sahu 2020; Kafka 2020). The literature suggests that the majority of students approve of a university emergency contact scheme being used if necessary (Neves and Hillman, 2019; Linton et al., 2022). The aim of this study was to explore student perspectives on the introduction of an emergency contact scheme, and how this could be most effectively implemented and used. 113 students from various undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the School of Applied Social Studies were recruited via opportunistic sampling and completed an online JISC survey. The majority of students (96%) were in favour of the proposed scheme. Of those opposed, there appeared to be concerns over a loss of agency, worries about their potential contact or the contact worsening the situation. They determined that either a parent/guardian (49%) or partner (35%) would be the best individual to contact, and this should be done by the student's personal tutor (67%) via telephone call (42%). Finally, the preferred term for the contact scheme was found to be "named trusted person" (59%) as opposed to "emergency contact" (27%).

Citation

HENDERSON, S. and FORBES-MCKAY, K. 2022. Developing an emergency contact scheme for student wellbeing. Presented at the 2022 RGU annual learning and teaching conference (RGU LTC 2022): enhancing for impact, 21 October 2022, Aberdeen, UK.

• Presentation Conference Type: Lecture
• Conference Name: 2022 RGU annual learning and teaching conference (RGU LTC 2022): enhancing for impact
• Conference Location: Aberdeen, UK
• Start Date: Oct 21, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 3, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Mar 3, 2023
• Keywords: Student support services; Health and wellbeing in higher education
• Public URL: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1898856
• Related Public URLs: https://rgu-repository.worktribe.com/output/1839941 (Full Proceedings)