An Interview with Sinéad Henry, the new VP for Welfare at QUBSU

Audio File:

 https://www.mixcloud.com/TheScoopQUB/sinead-henry-the-new-vp-for-welfare-at-qubsu/

Transcription:

Rory – We are doing another special edition of the scoop today with Sinead Henry who is the new VP for Welfare at QUBSU. You were training last week down at SUT, how did it go?

Sinead – A lot of the mental health stuff is very useful, so every year students come back with their biggest concern being mental health – and that is reflected in the south as well. As well as that, myself Lucy and Hamsa did extra training with USI, the mental health first aid course.

R – Was that another week?

S – No that was just another two days.

R – What was that training covering?

S – Well it was mental health first aid, so when someone comes to you and they may be suicidal, anxious, or in a psychotic episode, or under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and how to respond to that.

R -  So is that what you see as your job’s focus? Because a lot of your manifesto was mental health based…

S – This year we are trying to do something different, in that all six of us are focusing on mental health to an extent. Of course, it is in my remit and stuff, but I still want to do a lot of work on pro-choice, the sex-ed and the housing. But as a group I think we are going to focus more on mental health.

R – We are going to talk about sexual education more specifically later, but, four weeks into the job, has anything surprised you yet?

S – Not really, I think it’s just a lot to learn. For example, how to put on an email signature.

R – So, have you begun implementing all your ideas and schemes yet?

S – Yeah, so I’m trying to plan for the sexual health stuff on the first week of October, the week after freshers. I am making some inroads with the mental health training, it’s trying to find what is feasible for the most amount of training. In particular, we are working with safeTALK – who are happy to do the training, but their resources are quite limited, so they can only take on about 20 students.

R – Are safeTALK an organisation here?

S – Yeah, they do training on how to respond to someone who has come to you and is suicidal. So, it is really good training and important, but it’s trying to find what is most feasible. PIPS have come back to us and said they can work with groups of 30 students and are happy to come back 2/3 times. At the moment we are trying to focus on groups who will have the most interaction with first years, because they are the most vulnerable group. There has been a good bit of interest from sports teams, especially because mental health in young men is so bad. Other than that, we are trying to work with Peer Mentors and RAs too. 

R – Being a big football fan, there has been a notable rise in people willing to speak about the mental difficulties of being a professional athlete. Is that something you are wanting to capitalise on?

 S – Yeah, hopefully training in mental health does become more normalised if we are doing the training with PIPS and seen as basically training for first aid for physical health – because they are equally important. But they’re both handled in two completely different ways.

R – What is PIPS?

S – PIPS is a charity who works with people who have been impacted by mental health and suicide. They care for anyone feeling suicidal and provide after care for anyone who has attempted suicidal or had family/friends impacted by it

R – So the first week of October is the goal then?

S – Yeah but it’s difficult at the moment to get hold of students, because they aren’t about. So early October, late September is when we’re aiming for to try get students when they aren’t in fresher’s mode, and not in essay mode. We don’t want to scare students coming in with the suicide training, but we also want to normalise it to an extent, so that if they feel that way then they are happy enough to come forward.

 R – yeah you don’t want to link the idea of university with suicidal thoughts, but you want to make them aware that if something does happen, that the SU is there to help and talk to?

S – Yeah because first years in Elms, I always found it quite isolating because of the size of the building and there’s no real buzz about.

R – Yeah it always gave me prison vibes

S – the cinder blocks don’t help 

R – In your manifesto, you talked about creating a wellbeing council – what would this encompass? 

S – It has changed to an extent, because when you’re running you think about yourself rather than how you’ll work within a group. So, the idea has become a mental health working group, which has taken over what would have been the wellbeing council. It’ll include officers, SU staff, PTOs and then hoping to reach out to students after fresher’s week and engage with the survey I talked about in my manifesto. It’ll be out before Christmas and affect policies for the upcoming year.

R – So is that how you’re going to interact then, it’ll be the survey method of engaging people?

S – Well, we are also considering doing something like what was done ahead of the new build. Obviously, we won’t have the enterprise suite, but we would have a wall where students can put up requests for services that they want, or they think they’re in need of 

R – I didn’t realise that when the SU moves to the ELTC – which is behind the union as it stands right now – you’ll be on the ground floor? Will this help increase visibility?

S – I definitely think so. I hope the footfall is still high as well, with people looking for the speakeasy which will have moved and will help us get more engagement.

R – Yeah it should work that you’re at the front of SU. Especially if the new SU, is on the way to the bar 

S – Freshers fair this year is going to be on the main lawn too because there is no room in the decant. That should help visibility as well.

R – in your manifesto, you were talking about creating a week-long housing initiative – is that gear just toward first years, or everyone?

S - Everybody, to an extent. I have been caught off myself, when after first year you are dying for a house with your mates and you get caught out by a landlord. The landlord is then terrible, and you’re stuck with him. I think everyone thinks they’re clued in after first year – and you’re never as clued in as you think. I have friends who are first years, who are looking at houses in streets which are really bad for break ins and stuff and you’re not always of where you are

R - Yeah sometimes you learn stuff from the bad times you know?

 S - It’s hard to take advice from people sometimes, thinking that you know everything and stuff. You never take that advice from your friends who are saying stay away from that landlord he’s a crook and stuff.

R - So, how are you going to get the student body engaged with that then?

S - Me and Robert are working on it together and I think they’re looking to do the ‘Ready to Rent’ again, but I’d like to do something with a bit more advice and far reaching. So were looking to work out something between us, on how to do it and when you try and catch students – because they are looking earlier and earlier for housing now.

R - The importance of sexual health and mental health is something you’ve spoken about before – is there a specific way you’re going to promote sexual education, or mental health associated with sex in general?

S - I’m currently planning the shag week for the first week of October. The most important thing is the inclusivity of the LGBT+ community, is to make it part of a ‘normal’ sex ed – and I use the term ‘normal’ loosely. Because, there is no point in saying here is a LGBT sex ed because that segregates it more, and it should be inclusive of anyone. You also have to be aware that there may be students who may be in need of LGBT sex ed, who aren’t out in or aren’t comfortable identifying as that in university and they need that education as much as anyone else. I think the mental health stuff I will work on with Hamsa, on the equality and diversity end of it. Because the LGBT+ have a bad history with mental health, and we are going to try incorporate that in – we are going to do a sex quiz and a sex ed night in Elms and then work from there.

R - Is the SHAG week then going to be the kick-off to all this then?

S - Yeah, you want the SU to be as fun as possible. No one wants to see the SU as basically another set of parents saying, “you shouldn’t have sex”, and “if you’re going to have sex use a condom”. That’s the last thing we want to do! We want to try make it is as fun, and least cringey as possible. I was looking at trying to get one of the drag queens from Kremlin to host the quiz, but I haven’t heard back yet.

R - So this week is the start of PRIDE then?

S - Yeah, Hamsa was starting to work on banners and stuff today. But there aren’t too many students around right now to work with. She is trying to hang the banner on Wednesday/Thursday and has all the flags ready now.

*This was recorded ahead of PRIDE celebrations, for more details on the QUBSU’s engagement look at @QUBSU on twitter*

R - Back to your manifesto, you spoke about creating a guarantor scheme where QUB themselves would be the guarantor, have you spoken to anyone in Queens about that?

S - I’m talking to finance at the minute. Trying to make some inroads, we do have some policy on it which is actually under the Equality and Diversity remit, so I’ll work with Hamsa on it. But I think it is really unfair, QUB are taking in more and more international students

R - Yeah, I think by 2020, they want 20% of their student populous to be international students

S - It’s so unfair, a lot of the time people assume that it’s their parents who are paying for their places here but a lot of the time it is out of their own pocket. Elms is affordable for one year but doing it for two or three is very expensive. The price goes up every year!

R - Do you think QUB will be willing to do the scheme, especially with the growing ‘marketization of education’?

S - I think you have to pitch it the right way, in that they will be seen as more attractive to international students if they can be seen to visibly care about the student more than the money they are getting. It’s a lack of care for international students, assuming that they can afford everything and they can’t. I have friends who live in Edinburgh who rent with a Polish guy and his parents had to sign up as guarantor. For a lot of people, they don’t actually know what a guarantor is until they get to university and only know it from those pay-day loan ads, which is quite scary 

R - The guarantor is meant to be an emergency back up, but if it is a parent who is X amount of hours and X amount of miles away, and it comes down to the fact that you or your guarantor has to pay that rent on a certain day, its terrifying that your house is in the hands of someone so far away rather you being able to run to your university.

S- As well, there are students whose parents don’t work, or may be retired and on a pension and stuff, and the guarantor schemes are set up for students who have parents who can pay their rent when they lapse, and that’s not the case for a large number of students – and international students in particular. QUB is more than capable to do this, they have the money there and if they want to count themselves as one of the best universities in the UK, with a number of universities with a similarly high intake of students provide this scheme.

R - There you go QUB, the gauntlet has been thrown down!

 R - Finally, have you advice for students coming into QUB this year? 

S -Don’t panic, I think that when a lot of people come they think they have to make a best friend right away. Don’t put yourself on a rigid timeline, enjoy yourself as much as possible. Don’t go buck daft, don’t begin the year getting noise complaints because you will end up more stressed than you need to be come the end of the year. Just be careful with stuff like that, the SU will always be here to help you out with stuff like that. Just enjoy it, I was so stressed in first year worried I have to make friends and find people to live with – but it will all be fine!

S - And do some work too. 

R - Thanks for coming on Sinead.

S -Thanks for having me.

By Rory Hughes