"Don't you want me baby?": Pastoral Care at QUB

Places of education, whether primary, secondary or tertiary all have a duty of care. This duty is exhibited in different ways as at each stage of study and life we require different needs and methods of nurturing, for maximum growth both in the academic and personal realms.

Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), when it comes to its duty of pastoral care, could do better. In an era where universities are run like private businesses, mental illness stats are skyrocketing, especially in Northern Ireland whose population consistently has the worst mental health in the entirety of the UK and Ireland (23.1% of the population of NI is suffering from poor mental health). However, looking at the pastoral care system in this institution it would be difficult to discern that they are facilities in high demand, and need, for the wider student body. Wrought with bureaucracy, paperwork seems to take the forefront here in lieu of action when it comes to helping students.

Assigned a personal tutor in the early weeks of the first year of the undergraduate degree, many students have little or no contact with this authority figure throughout their entire 3 years at QUB. This flimsy attempt to create a facade of personal support appears to be just another example of the university putting up appearances. To speak from personal experience, when in distress halfway through the second year of my own degree, I did not know the name nor the face of the personal tutor who was meant to have offered me all the support I’d needed over the previous 18 months. After interviewing three QUB students and one Union Theological College (UTC) student, I find that my own experiences when it came to difficulties receiving pastoral care were not anomalous - rather, a norm.

Whilst the Students’ Union (SU) takes a strong stand in campaigning and pushing to provide the much needed support to struggling students, not everyone is struggling to such a degree that they need transferred to a therapist. The decision to increase the 4 free counselling sessions offered by Inspire to 6 sessions is a wise move, but as SU President Connor Veighey admits “this is temporary and dependent on the fact that there has been somewhat less demand, allowing the same budget to be stretched a little further.”

Going on to reiterate that “[he does] not believe that  is sufficient and would like to see further investment to create a service that is fit for purpose and is unconditional.” This year the QUBSU launched Omni which is “a campaign to tackle the longer-term influences on mental health” and whilst “looking at making these changes in the long term, it’s crucial that [they] have a service fit for purpose in the immediate term”. This may very well be the case but further obstacles seem to stand in the way of students even before reaching out or asking for help.

There is a distinct lack of awareness of services provided for students, despite what the university admin says. In my conversations with the students of QUB, it is painfully obvious that there is no clarity regarding what they are entitled to during their time in education. What this comes down to is a distinct lack of communication between staff and students, with a simultaneously apparent lack of motivation on the part of staff to support or to even push students in the right direction. Instead of helping ease stress, the cold, detached ‘relationship’ tutors and lecturers have with students is one of negligence - with the possibility of tutor's not knowing the very names of those they are teaching, how can they be aware of specific needs or mental states?

What QUB fails to realise in its minimal offerings of pastoral support is that many people in the university, struggling, stressed or otherwise do not know how or when to ask for help. In addition to this, the inevitable ping-ponging of emails between various contacts and directories, to even reach an actual person who will offer an appointment for a face to face meeting, takes such a strain that it is easy to give up in the process. Often it can take up to a month or longer for Inspire counselling services to get in contact with its recipients. Furthermore, the Student Guidance Centre’s methods of dealing with those asking for help is inherently unsettling - appointments feel more like job interviews than pastoral meetings and there is a distinct sidelining of those who don’t fit in an easily ticked box.

Looking again to the responsibility and duty of care QUB has, it is rather irrelevant how the university sees itself in this regard. Its duty is not to how it paints itself to investors or potential students, but how it treats and looks after its currents student body. Asking them, the evidence is woefully clear that QUB does not fulfil this role to its “full potential” or indeed the potential promised upon entering education here. Students recognise the “good intentions” and that “correct facilities are in place” but in an “oversubscribed system” students are left feeling "anonymous and not cared for or supported”.

One student of Theology, predominantly studying in the partnered UTC (situated on Botanic Avenue), took a QUB English module in the first semester of this year. Whilst, to his own admittance he “did not attend tutorials and didn’t hand in coursework” there was a very real problem as “no one in the class, tutor included, knew my name nor that I was missing”. When the lack of attendance was identified - not until week nine of the semester - the emails were not those of concern but accusation where  “no one arranged to see me or fix the problem”. This shows a huge disparity between QUB and its partnered UTC (whose intake of QUB students is to be frozen come September 2019) as the same student received “genuine care and support” here. In UTC, if classes weren’t attended, “problems were picked up on and meetings arranged where UTC professors ensured that deadlines could be met and problems dealt with as and when they occurred,” something which to a QUB student sounds something closer to  an idealistic pipe-dream than a reality.

When asked the initial question of how supported students feel at QUB, the answers were hardly affirming; “[QUB has] the right resources but I never really feel a strong pastoral presence when I’m at uni” one student comments, going on to compare it to school days when pupils “frequently [went] to teachers for a cup of tea and a kind word.” There is an understanding here of the distinct difference between school teachers and lecturers and their roles, but to go from a place where support was at hand to one where she has “met her personal tutor once” in her 3 years, is at its least, disconcerting. Another student picks up this same thread, noting how the lack of relationship with personal tutors causes feelings of “discomfort when in need of help”.

Awareness of support in QUB is as minimal as its website page on the subject. Upon inspection, there exists one anaemic paragraph mentioning the Student Guidance Centre and the possibility of a temporary withdrawal from studying in extreme cases. One student spoken to was only made aware of the university services through a GP instead of the institution itself. What is perhaps most interesting is the fact that “everyone mentions different things but no-one knows the full extent of support”. There is a tendency to hear of help through the grapevine rather than in plain terms. For example who knew that QUB offered specific counselling for males suffering from mental illness? Or how many are aware of the fact that the disability service is for bereavement, depression, anxiety, those with young families and any other long-term fixture in life that may affect an ability to submit an essay on the deadline set 3 months previously.

Everyone spoken to who attended Inspire counselling noted that counselling sessions needed to be increased from 4 - with one student only receiving 3 of 4 promised hour long sessions. The quality of this therapy is not being questioned, and results prove that Inspire counselling is genuinely effective in helping students with situational or short term struggles. One student noted how it helped her reached an acknowledgment that long-term issues were not a quick-fix and another spoke of a good relationship with her counsellor which helped her feel her problems were relevant and real. This was further reflected with the counsellor applying for 4 more sessions which were hugely beneficial. It is instances like this that suggests that the QUB approach of “paint every issue with the same brush” does not quite work and rather than mass increase or decrease of sessions, it would perhaps be wiser to treat each case and each person as an individual once they reach a stage of needing one on one support.

There is a graciousness with the students of QUB and an awareness that their university does not have malicious intent when it comes to coping with those who are in need of help and support. The counselling service is truly beneficial, with QUB providing qualified individuals who make students feel comfortable and safe during sessions. However, despite this, with the conclusion of the sessions, students are dropped back into the pool of university life again without even a follow up email. In less extreme cases, access to personnel is almost more minimal - not all these needing pastoral support should be steamrolled into counselling, especially due to long waiting lists and over-subscription to services. An example being that the Exceptional Circumstances approval process is riddled with inefficiencies, with at least 5 emails needed before gaining approval. In addition to this, there seems to be a general lack of incentive for lecturers to reply to emails, with extension requests getting buried in admin. This can be particularly frustrating “especially for those aiming for a high grades while working through mental illness” as it can take right up until the date of the original deadline for the extension to be approved; it is "difficult to work to a high level with that uncertainty plaguing the study time". 

What is perhaps not recognised in the current system is those lecturers and tutors who go above and beyond to not only support but inspire and enlighten their students. Every institution has its own “oh captain, my captains” peppered throughout its departments. It is these classes that students run to sign up to and look forward to attending. We are all beings craving recognition and individualism from the 25,000 other students roaming the QUB campus. This shows how pastoral care is not only a role of the QUB staff body but of each individual teacher who makes up that body - when staff become more present and less nameless, so will their students.

Pastoral care at a university level should be more than an assortment of emails from administrative staff members who are never seen in person. It should be more than adding countless names to counselling waiting lists or offering time away from study. It should not get to the stage where students are mentally ill before they are offered any help. Pastoral care at a university level should be a distinct awareness of the students in each class by tutors - especially once module sizes become smaller with students diversifying their interests in later years of their degrees. In short, pastoral care starts with the individuals standing at the front of every lecture theatre and no amount of SU campaigns can nor should take away this responsibility. In fact, they should enhance it?

by H.R Gibbs